AI and the First Amendment

The more that outputs come from generative AI, the more the “free speech” treatment of AIs will matter, as I argue in my latest column for The Free Press.  Here is one excerpt, quite separate from some of my other points:

Another problem is that many current bills, including one already passed in California, require online platforms to disclose which of their content is AI-generated, in the interest of transparency. That mandate has some good features, and in the short run it may be necessary to ease people’s fears about AI. But I am nervous about its longer-run implications.

Let’s say that most content evolves to be jointly produced by humans and AI, and not always in a way where all the lines are clear (GPT-5 did proofread this column, to look for stylistic errors, and check for possible improvements). Does all joint work have to be reported as such? If not, does a single human tweak to AI-generated material mean that no reporting is required?

And if joint work does have to be reported as joint, won’t that level of requirement inevitably soon apply to all output? Who will determine if users accurately report their role in the production of output? And do they have to keep records about this for years? The easier it becomes for individual users to use AI to edit output, the less it will suffice to impose a single, supposedly unambiguous reporting mandate on the AI provider.

I am not comfortable with the notion that the government has the legal right to probe the origin of a work that comes out under your name. In addition to their impracticality, such laws could become yet another vehicle for targeting writers, visual artists, and musicians whom the government opposes. For example, if a president doesn’t like a particular singer, he can ask her to prove that she has properly reported all AI contributions to her recordings.

I suspect this topic will not prove popular with many people.  If you dislike free speech, you may oppose the new speech opportunities opened up by AIs (just build a bot and put it out there to blog, it does not have to be traceable to you).  If you do like free speech, you will be uncomfortable with the much lower marginal cost of producing “license,” resulting from AI systems.  Was the First Amendment really built to handle such technologies?

In my view free speech remains the best constitutional policy, but I do not expect AI systems to make it more popular as a concept.  It is thus all the more important that we fight for free speech rights heading into the immediate future.