In the letter, shared exclusively with FedScoop, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged the LOC’s copyright office to expand an existing “good-faith security research exemption” to include research that exists outside of traditional security concerns, such as bias, arguing that it would be the best path for ensuring a “robust security ecosystem” for tools such as generative AI. 

The letter from Warner, co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, is in response to a petition from Jonathan Weiss, founder of the IT consulting firm Chinnu Inc., that asked the LOC to establish a new exemption to address security research on generative AI models and systems. 

A spokesperson for Warner said in an email that an expansion to the exemption rather than an entirely new exemption “is the best way to extend the existing protections that have enabled a robust cybersecurity research ecosystem to the emerging issues surrounding safe AI.”

Warner’s letter mirrors a Department of Justice response to the same petition last month. The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the DOJ’s Criminal Division wrote that “good faith research on potentially harmful outputs of AI and similar algorithmic systems should be similarly exempted from the DMCA’s circumvention provisions.”

Said Warner: “It is crucial that we allow researchers to test systems in ways that demonstrate how malfunctions, misuse and misoperation may lead to an increased risk of physical or psychological harm.”

The Virginia Democrat, who has introduced bipartisan legislation on artificial intelligence security and emerging tech standards, pointed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework to acknowledge that AI’s risks “differ from traditional software risks in key ways,” opening the door for not only security vulnerabilities but also dangerous and biased outputs. 

The use of generative AI for fraud and non-consensual image generation are among the deceptive practices Warner noted as reasons for consumer protections, such as watermarks and content credentials. Additionally, the lawmaker asked the LOC to ensure that the potential expanded exemption “does not immunize” research that would intentionally undermine protective measures. 

“Absent very clear indicia of good faith, efforts that undermine provenance technology should not be entitled to the expanded exemption,” Warner said. 

The senator also asked the LOC to include security and safety vulnerabilities, especially involving bias and additional harmful outputs, in its expanded good-faith security research definition.

In response to Warner’s letter, Weiss said in an email to FedScoop that he doesn’t “care whether the existing exemption is expanded to include research on AI bias/harmful output, or whether an entirely new exemption is created. Our main concern is to secure protections for good faith research on these emerging intelligent systems, whose inner workings even the brightest minds in the world cannot currently explain.”

The Weiss petition and letters from DOJ and Warner were prompted by the LOC Copyright Office’s ninth triennial rulemaking proceeding, which accepts public input for new exemptions to the DMCA.

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The Subcommittee on Modernization unanimously approved by voice vote the “Modernizing the Congressional Research Service’s Access to Data Act” (H.R. 7593), which is aimed at making it easier and faster for the research entity to obtain data from federal agencies and entities within the executive branch. 

“While CRS’s work is held up by bureaucratic processes and procedures, our work is held up. That is unacceptable, and our constituents deserve better,” Subcommittee Chairwoman Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., said at the markup. 

At a hearing in March, Robert Newlen, CRS’s interim director, told the subcommittee that the agency has difficulty obtaining information from government agencies and the legislation would address those “roadblocks.”

The committee also advanced by voice vote a bill that would direct the Library of Congress to publish digital annotated constitutions instead of the hardbound copies it’s currently required to produce. Bice said eliminating the print requirement is estimated to save just over a million dollars.

Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., the panel’s ranking member, noted that both pieces of legislation address recommendations from the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which was a precursor to the creation of the subcommittee. 

Those recommendations were that congressional support agencies, like CRS, should report on challenges to accessing federal data and potential solutions, and for lawmakers to examine whether authorities for those agencies needed to be updated.

In addition to being a milestone for the subcommittee, which was created last February, it was also the first House Administration subcommittee to have a markup vote in 31 years, Bice said at the meeting.

“We’re trying to find ways to improve — modernize Congress, of course — but also just improve processes, and I think these are just two easy, simple wins that can make that happen,” Bice told FedScoop after the markup. 

The bills go next to the full committee.

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FedScoop inquiries to every member of the House and Senate AI caucuses yielded over a dozen responses from lawmakers’ offices about whether they are using generative AI tools, as well as if they have their own AI policies. Seven offices indicated or had previously stated that staff were using generative AI tools, five said they were not currently using the technology, and three provided a response but didn’t address whether their offices were currently using it. 

The varied responses from lawmakers and evolving policies for use in each chamber paint a picture of a legislative body exploring how to potentially use the technology while remaining cautious about its outputs. The exploration of generative AI by lawmakers and staff also comes as Congress attempts to create guardrails for the rapidly growing technology.

“I have recommended to my staff that you have to think about how you use ChatGPT and other tools to enhance productivity,” Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., told FedScoop in an interview, pointing to responding to constituent letters as an example of an area where the process could be streamlined.

But Bera also noted that while he has accessed ChatGPT, he doesn’t often use it. “I’d rather do the human interaction,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., has policies for generative AI use in both his office and the majority office of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he chairs. 

“The policy permits the use of generative AI, and provides strong parameters to ensure the accuracy of any information compiled using generative AI, protect the privacy and confidentiality of constituents, ensure sensitive information is not shared outside of secure Senate channels, and guarantee that human judgment is not supplanted,” a Peters aide told FedScoop.

And some lawmakers noted they’ve explored the technology themselves.

Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Fla., told FedScoop that when ChatGPT first became public, he asked the service to write a floor speech on the topic of the day as a Republican member of Congress from Florida. Once the machine responded, Franklin said he joked with his communication staff that “y’all are in big trouble.’”

While Franklin did not directly comment on AI use within his office during an interview with FedScoop, he did say that he’ll play with ChatGPT and doesn’t want to be “left behind” where the technology is concerned. 

House and Senate policies

As interest in the technology has grown, both House and Senate administrative arms have developed policies for generative tools. And while generative AI use is permitted in both chambers, each has its own restrictions.

The House Chief Administrative Officer’s House Digital Services purchased 40 ChatGPT Plus licenses last April to begin experimenting with the technology, and in June the CAO restricted ChatGPT use in the House to the ChatGPT Plus version only, while outlining guardrails. That was first reported by Axios and FedScoop independently confirmed with a House aide. 

There is also indication that work is continuing on that policy. At a January hearing, House Deputy Chief Administrative Officer John Clocker shared that the office is developing a new policy for AI with the Committee on House Administration and said the CAO plans on creating guidance and training for House staff.

In a statement to FedScoop, the Committee on House Administration acknowledged that offices are experimenting with AI tools — ChatGPT Plus, specifically — for research and evaluation, and noted some offices are developing “tip sheets to help guide their use.”

“This is a practice we encourage. CAO is able to work with interested offices to craft tip sheets using lessons learned from earlier pilots,” the committee said in a statement. 

The committee has also continued to focus on institutional policies for AI governance, the statement said. “Towards that end, last month we updated our 2024 User’s Guide to include mention of data governance and this month we held internal discussions on AI guardrails which included national AI experts and House Officials.”

On the Senate side, the Sergeant at Arms’ Chief Information Officer issued a notice to offices allowing the use of ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing Chat, and Google Bard and outlining guidance for use last year. PopVox Foundation was the first to share that document in a blog, and FedScoop independently confirmed with a Senate aide that the policy was received in September. The document also indicated that the Sergeant at Arms CIO determined that those three tools had a “moderate level of risk if controls are followed.”

Congressional support agencies, including the Library of Congress, the Government Accountability Office and the Government Publishing Office, have also recently shared how they’re exploring AI to improve their work and services in testimony before lawmakers. Those uses could eventually include tools that support the work of congressional staff as well.

Aubrey Wilson, director of government innovation at the nonprofit POPVOX Foundation who has written about AI use in the legislative branch, said the exploration of the technology is “really innovative for Congress.”

“Even though it might seem small, for these institutions that traditionally move slowly, the fact that you’re even seeing certain offices that have productively and proactively set these internal policies and are exploring these use cases,” Wilson said. “That is something to celebrate.”

Individual approaches

Of the offices that told FedScoop they do use the technology, most indicated that generative tools were used to assist with things like research and workflow, and a few, including Peters’ office, noted that they had their own policies to ensure the technology was being used appropriately. 

Clocker, of the CAO, had recommended offices adopt their own internal policies adjusted to their preferences and risk tolerance at the January Committee on House Administration hearing. POPVOX has also published a guide for congressional offices establishing their own policies for generative AI tools.

The office of Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., for example, received approval from the House for its AI use and encouraged staff to use the account to assist in drafting materials. But they’ve also stressed that staff should use the account for work only, ensure they fact-check the outputs, and are transparent about their use of AI with supervisors, according to information provided by Ivey’s office. 

“Overall, it is a tool we have used to improve workflow and efficiencies, but it is not a prominent and redefining aspect of our operations,” said Ramón Korionoff, Ivey’s communications director.

Senate AI Caucus co-chair Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., also has a policy that provides guidance for responsible use of AI in his office. According to a Heinrich spokesperson, those policies “uphold a high standard of integrity rooted in the fundamental principle that his constituents ultimately benefit from the work of people.”

Even if they don’t have their own policies yet, other offices are looking into guidelines. Staff for one House Republican, for example, noted they were exploring best practices for AI for their office.

Two House lawmakers indicated they were keeping in line with CAO guidance when asked about a policy. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said in a statement that his “office follows the guidance of the CAO and uses ChatGPT Plus for basic research and evaluation tasks.” 

Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-Calif., on the other hand, isn’t using generative AI tools in his office but  said it “will continue to follow the CAO’s guidance.”

“While Rep Mullin is interested in continuing to learn about the various applications of AI and find bipartisan policy solutions to issues that may arise from this technology, our staff is not using or experimenting with generative AI tools at this time,” his office shared with FedScoop in a written statement.

That guidance has been met with some criticism, however. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif, initially pushed back on those guardrails after they were announced, arguing the decision about what to use should be left up to individual offices. He also noted, at the time, that his staff were free to use the tools without restrictions. 

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., has also previously indicated he and his staff use the technology. A spokesperson for Young pointed FedScoop to a statement the senator made last year noting that he regularly uses AI and encourages his staff to use it as well, though he said staff are ultimately responsible for the end product.

Parodies and potential uses

Some uses of generative tools have made their way into hearings and remarks, albeit the uses are generally more tongue-in-cheek or meant to underscore the capabilities of the technology.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., for example, began his remarks at a July hearing with an AI-generated parody of “New York, New York;” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., played an AI-generated audio clip at a May hearing that mimicked the sound of his own voice; Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., delivered remarks at a March 2023 hearing written by ChatGPT; and Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., delivered a speech on the House floor in January 2023 written by ChatGPT.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said anecdotally in an interview that he’s heard of others using it to draft press releases or speeches, though it’s not something his office uses. “This is no criticism of GPT4, but when you are looking at an enormous amount of written material, and you’re averaging it all out, you’re going to get something pretty average,” Beyer said.

Other lawmakers seemed interested in the uses of technology but haven’t yet experimented with it in their offices. 

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., for example, said in an interview that while his office isn’t using AI right now, he and his staff are exploring how it could be used.

“We are looking at potential use of AI for fact-finding, for the verification of any data that we may have available to us, fact-checking matters that are important for us in terms of background information for debate,” Espaillat said, adding “but we’re not there yet.”

POPVOX Foundation’s Wilson, a former congressional staffer, said one of her takeaways from her time working in Congress was “how absolutely underwater” staff is with keeping up with information, from corresponding with federal agencies to letters from constituents. She said that generative AI could help congressional staff sort through information and data faster, which could inform data-driven policymaking.

“In a situation where Congress is not willing to give itself more people to help with the increased workflow, the idea that it’s innovatively allowing the people who are in Congress to explore use of better tools is one way that I think congressional capacity can really be aided,” Wilson said. 

Rebecca Heilweil contributed to this story.

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Launching the first module, which is known as the Copyright Recordation System (CRS), was the first step in improving and integrating all of the Copyright Office’s technology systems — which also handle copyright registration, public records and internal licensing — into a platform called the Enterprise Copyright System (ECS).

The office is tasked with maintaining records of copyright registration in the U.S., and for more than two years its Office of the Chief Information Officer has worked to replace paper-based processing of copyright ownership transfer requests with a digital submission process.

“What we’re building is really an ecosystem where someone can have an account, and they can actually interact with copyright on multiple services,” Natalie Buda Smith, acting director of digital strategy within OCIO, told FedScoop. “You can register a claim for copyright, you can transfer — all these different activities around it.”

Cloud First development and the use of micro services are key components of the design system used to create the new module.

Buda Smith served as chief of design within the IT Design and Development Directorate for the CRS project, which involved user experience testing early and often. Recordation is a service sought by a specific subset of users when, say, a music catalog is purchased and the rights transferred to a new owner.

Accenture Federal Services supports the library’s ECS UX project with a small team that includes an interaction and service designer and content strategist. Accenture conducted extensive research and stakeholder workshops before reporting its recommendations in fiscal 2021, and is currently focused on making it easier for content creators, examiners, registration staff and leadership to create, edit, manage and push help content instructing ECS users unschooled in copyright law how to navigate the ecosystem.

“[We created] a single-source-of-truth document, which really helped our content authors store, review and approve help content for each of the application streams that they’re responsible for,” said Jennifer Huppert, visual design manager within AFS’s Digital Studio.

Accenture then used the document to create a prototype for the work detail section of the registration app to optimize components and content.

A separate Accenture team provides quality assurance and testing services and employed virtual users to ensure the CRS app and related servers could handle the traffic expected at launch and beyond.

The Copyright Office started with a small CRS pilot community and scaled to 180 organizations before launch — participants recording more than 8,600 documents — with “a lot” more expected, Buda Smith said. In fiscal 2021, for instance, the office saw nearly 12,000 documents containing titles of more than 950,000 works recorded.

Not only does the recordation system reduce document processing times from several months to weeks, but it features a consistent UX when creating an account or transferring a submission, the ability to ask the Copyright Office questions or engage with it if something is missing, status tracking and notifications, and integrated online payments.

While the Library of Congress has contracts with the big three cloud service providers — Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure — AWS is the sole vendor for CRS.

The Copyright Office continues to add recordation features and plans to incorporate Sections 203 and 305, types of notices of termination, next.

“We don’t see this as a discrete application that we just roll out once and that we look at again in another year,” Buda Smith said. “We use sprints, and we’re constantly improving all these services; so this is a long term program for us.”

Registration, the initiation of a copyright claim, is the “big” module coming in the next few years, she said. But a public records module, letting users look up who owns the rights to a particular work or set, is in beta and on track to become the primary means of searching LoC’s catalog.

A byproduct of the library’s ECS custom design and development work is the onboarding of talent from media companies, consulting firms and other large libraries.

“It’s refreshing in the sense that everyone wants to keep an eye on what’s the latest technology on the horizon,” Buda Smith said. “What’s the best way to work but make it fit for the library?”

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A CoE team within the General Services Administration‘s Technology Transformation Services will work with the library‘s Office of Public Information and Education to find gaps in service delivery and technologies that could streamline efforts.

The library is the tenth agency to partner with TTS on its CoE approach to modernizing information technology, after the Food and Drug Administration last did so in May.

“By focusing on experience, agencies can improve satisfaction, trust, and efficiency, and avoid lost opportunities,” said Bob DeLuca, director of TTS, in the announcement. “This contact center modernization effort reflects our partner’s commitment to their customers as the Contact Center CoE prioritizes access to consistent and accurate information in a timely manner.”

PIO responds to copyright inquiries, often by explaining registration policies and procedures.

The partnership with TTS, which sits within GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, is part of the broader CoE initiative to accelerate IT modernization at federal agencies using government best practices and expertise and industry innovations. Applications, platforms, processes, personnel, and software solutions are all leveraged.

“The modernization of the federal government’s IT infrastructure and applications is an important priority for GSA,” said Julie Dunne, commissioner of FAS, in a statement. “The Centers of Excellence are a cornerstone in our IT modernization work at the Federal Acquisition Service.”

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Through a single-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, the library wants a managed provider to offer the services of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure across the legislative branch.

While the contract is developed primarily for Library of Congress offices to build upon the work it already has done with those providers, it will also be made available to all legislative agencies, such as the Senate, House of Representatives, Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Capitol Police and others, contracting documents say.

“This contract will provide the full range of Cloud computing, storage, software and services covering the spectrum of the Library’s Information Technology needs,” the solicitation says. It adds: “The Cloud service providers defined within this contract were determined based on pre-existing cloud environments currently in production within the Library’s cloud deployments. The Library intends to place orders to support the continuation of these existing cloud services.”

Other legislative agencies that want to move to the cloud but don’t want to go through the burdensome process of drafting their own separate contracts can simply “organize their utilization and application of cloud accounts according to their local governance,” the solicitation says.

The contract will run through June 2025. Bids are due by June 2.

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The group sent a letter to the House and Senate on Tuesday detailing what they see as weaknesses in the Library of Congress’s implementation of crsreports.congress.gov, a relatively new public-facing website for CRS reports. Among the issues identified in the letter: Public-facing reports are only published as PDFs, which “significantly undermines their utility,” the site’s “bulk download” function only allows for the download of 5,000 reports at a time and non-confidential historical reports aren’t published.

A little background: The CRS’s nonpartisan public policy reports, which are produced by the thousands each year on issues as varied as U.S. policy in Kuwait, next-generation 911 technologies, violent crime in American cities and more, have mostly been kept out of the hands of regular citizens unless shared by someone in a congressional office. The initial reasoning? The cost of reproducing copies would be too high.

Of course, in the internet era, this concern no longer applies, and so the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 directed the Library of Congress to build and maintain a public-facing site for non-confidential “R” series reports.

In September 2018 the Library launched crsreports.congress.gov and started publishing non-confidential CRS reports there.

But while transparency advocates welcomed the new site, they also wanted more from it. Quickly, it was criticized for being incomplete and “unreasonably expensive” and possibly even redundant to existing efforts.

One central sticking point was about which reports will be made public. The library is publishing current and recently archived reports, but some transparency advocates argue that there are older historical reports and other CRS products that are also in the public interest.

Now, organizations including Demand Progress, the R Street Institute, Lincoln Network, Government Accountability Project and more want to make sure lawmakers don’t forget about this.

“We hope that you will encourage the Library to improve how it is currently publishing CRS reports and to expand the scope of the reports it publishes online,” Tuesday’s letter reads.

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During a Senate hearing Thursday, Librarian Carla Hayden said her organization has “significantly improved” its situation since a 2015 Government Accountability Office audit called out “significant weaknesses” in the library’s IT management. To date, Hayden said, the library has closed “nearly 95%” of the GAO’s recommendations. It intends to close out the remaining percentage by the end of this fiscal year.

“The library is a different organization from what it was just a short time ago,” Hayden said. “We have stabilized our core IT structure, we have streamlined and strengthened our IT governance and we have centralized and professionalized our IT workforce.”

Library CIO Bernard A. Barton Jr. testified that the organization suffered from a “lack of vision” and “lack of oversight” rather than any lack of talent when he took the job in September 2015. Indeed, one of the GAO’s main recommendations in 2015 was that the library hire a CIO after going without one since 2012. Clearly, that task has been completed.

The library has six remaining GAO recommendations to deal with, Barton said, two of which deal with security and are therefore not among the 31 public recommendations.

The Library of Congress’ IT systems underpin its growing focus on digital technology as a way to “bring the Library to our users.” The library’s Labs team has worked on digital initiatives from crowdsourcing captions to make old American newspaper archives searchable to using geographic information systems to tell stories and beyond.

Tech developments haven’t always been smooth sailing for the library, though. In 2018 some transparency advocates criticized the library’s new public-facing Congressional Research Service Reports website for being incomplete and “unreasonably expensive.”

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The library recently won a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation which will go to support its Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud project. Through this project, the team will “test a cloud-based approach for interacting with digital collections as data.”

“As technology advances, we envision a future in which all users — researchers, artists, students and more – are only limited by the questions they can think to ask; where scale, complexity, uniqueness, and speed are aligned to support their goals and result in fundamentally transformed ways of understanding the world around us,” Kate Zwaard, the library’s Director of Digital Strategy, said in a statement.

LC Labs plans to collaborate on the project with IT experts at the library and outside researchers. It also intends to hire two Digital Scholarship Librarians.

The project aligns with the library’s most recent Digital Strategy, which commits to experimenting with emerging technologies. “In addition to the library’s ongoing investments in IT modernization, we will encourage a culture of continuous learning and capacity for innovation,” the strategy, which was released in October 2018, states. “We will engage with new technologies and communities.”

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The address constitution.congress.gov is the new digital home of “Constitution Annotated,” a Congressional Research Service product that allows users to “read about the Constitution in plain English” and get “a comprehensive overview of how the Constitution has been interpreted over time.”

“To be successful, collections must be used,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement. “That’s why I’m excited about the Constitution Annotated getting a new website. It’s a great example of what we mean when we say we’re putting our users first. We’ve taken some of the most comprehensive analysis of our Constitution — the laws that make America what it is — and we’re making them easier for everyone to use.”

Constitution Annotated has been around forever — it has been the official record of the constitution since its creation in 1911. In 2010, Congress asked that the document be made available for the general public, and in 2013 the library published the document online and through a mobile app.

That release had some weaknesses, though — the document was published as downloadable PDFs (not the most user-friendly approach) and the app only worked on iOS devices.

The new site makes a searchable, HTML version of the document available.

Demand Progress’ Daniel Schuman called the new site “a significant step in the right direction.”

“We welcome today’s progress,” Schuman and Amelia Strauss wrote for First Branch Forecast. But they have a suggestion for what comes next as well — “we encourage the Library to go a step further by publishing the treatise as data, such as in the XML format in which it is prepared (or perhaps a cleaned-up version).”

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