FOIA's Future: AI's Potential to Transform the FOIA Requester eXperience

Abstract

The ability of federal agencies to meet their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act faces growing challenges due to resource constraints, backlogs, and the growing volume and complexity of agency records in electronic form. The recent introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into FOIA workflows aims to improve the FOIA “requester experience” or “RX.” Subject to appropriate caveats, in this piece the authors speculate on how future AI applications over coming decades, including incorporating chatbots with generative AI capabilities, hold the potential to create a transformed FOIA process for requesters and in doing so, make government more accountable.