The U.S. National Security State is Here to Make AI Even Less Transparent and Accountable

The Biden White House has released a memorandum on “Advancing United States’ Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” which includes, among other things, a directive for the National Security apparatus to become a world leader in the use of AI....

Triumphs, Trials, and Tangles From California's 2024 Legislative Session

California’s 2024 legislative session has officially adjourned, and it’s time to reflect on the wins and losses that have shaped Californians’ digital rights landscape this year.EFF monitored nearly 100 bills in the state this session alone,...

Prosecutors in Washington State Warn Police: Don’t Use Gen AI to Write Reports

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which handles all prosecutions in the Seattle area, has instructed police in no uncertain terms: do not use AI to write police reports...for now. This is a good development. We hope prosecutors across...

Civil Rights Commission Pans Face Recognition Technology

In its recent report, Civil Rights Implications of Face Recognition Technology (FRT), the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights identified serious problems with the federal government’s use of face recognition technology, and in doing so recognized...

New EFF Report Provides Guidance to Ensure Human Rights are Protected Amid Government Use of AI in Latin America

Governments increasingly rely on algorithmic systems to support consequential assessments and determinations about people’s lives, from judging eligibility for social assistance to trying to predict crime and criminals. Latin America is no...

EFF & 140 Other Organizations Call for an End to AI Use in Immigration Decisions

EFF, Just Futures Law, and 140 other groups have sent a letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the immigration system. For years, EFF has been...

NO FAKES – A Dream for Lawyers, a Nightmare for Everyone Else

Performers and ordinary humans are increasingly concerned that they may be replaced or defamed by AI-generated imitations. We’re seeing a host of bills designed to address that concern – but every one just generates new problems. Case in point:...

How the FTC Can Make the Internet Safe for Chatbots

No points for guessing the subject of the first question the Wall Street Journal asked FTC Chair Lina Khan: of course it was about AI.Between the hype, the lawmaking, the saber-rattling, the trillion-dollar market caps, and the predictions of...

What Can Go Wrong When Police Use AI to Write Reports?

Axon—the makers of widely-used police body cameras and tasers (and that also keeps trying to arm drones)—has a new product: AI that will write police reports for officers. Draft One is a generative large language model machine learning system that...

The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies

There has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. The fretting has only gotten worse as a result of a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the...

Worried About AI Voice Clone Scams? Create a Family Password

Your grandfather receives a call late at night from a person pretending to be you. The caller says that you are in jail or have been kidnapped and that they need money urgently to get you out of trouble. Perhaps they then bring on a fake police...

The No AI Fraud Act Creates Way More Problems Than It Solves

Creators have reason to be wary of the generative AI future. For one thing, while GenAI can be a valuable tool for creativity, it may also be used to deceive the public and disrupt existing markets for creative labor. Performers, in particular,...

AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation

Generative AI allows people to produce piles upon piles of images and words very quickly. It would be nice if there were some way to reliably distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content. It would help people avoid endlessly...

No Robots(.txt): How to Ask ChatGPT and Google Bard to Not Use Your Website for Training

Both OpenAI and Google have released guidance for website owners who do not want the two companies using the content of their sites to train the company's large language models (LLMs). We've long been supporters of the right to scrape websites—the...

To Best Serve Students, Schools Shouldn’t Try to Block Generative AI, or Use Faulty AI Detection Tools

Generative AI gained widespread attention earlier this year, but one group has had to reckon with it more quickly than most: educators. Teachers and school administrators have struggled with two big questions: should the use of generative AI be...

EFF to Copyright Office: Copyright Is Indeed a Hammer, But Don’t Be Too Hasty to Nail Generative AI

Generative AI has sparked a great deal of hype, fear, and speculation. Courts are just beginning to analyze how traditional copyright laws apply to the creation and use of these technologies. Into this breach has stepped the United States...

A Broad Federal Publicity Right Is a Risky Answer to Generative AI Problems

As users continue to experiment with generative AI tools, artists are increasingly concerned that use of the tools to mimic their respective “styles” will put them out of business. In addition to the now-infamous AI-generated song that seemed to...

Generative AI Policy Must Be Precise, Careful, and Practical: How to Cut Through the Hype and Spot Potential Risks in New Legislation

Anxiety about generative AI is growing almost as fast as the use of the technology itself. Some of these concerns are reasonable, and some are fueled primarily by dramatic rhetoric from prominent figures in tech, entertainment, and national...

Face Recognition Isn’t Just Face Identification and Verification: It’s Also Photo Clustering, Race Analysis, Real-time Tracking, and More

Governments and corporations are tracking how we go about our lives with a unique marker that most of us cannot hide or change: our own faces. Across the country, communities are pushing back with laws that restrain this dangerous technology. In...