FOIAengine: Over 100 FOIA Requests to Federal Agencies
As the Trump Administration moves rapidly to install artificial intelligence throughout the federal government, a growing number of journalists, non-profits, lawyers, and executives are filing Freedom of Information Act requests to better understand the dramatic changes AI is bringing to how the government does its work.
AI has been the subject of well over 100 FOIA requests thus far this year to almost every agency and department that issues monthly FOIA logs, according to PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows.
FOIA requesters are probing to understand how processes are changing, the level of agencies’ preparedness for the transformation, and its impact on privacy and effectiveness.
News media (36 requests) and non-profits (25) were the most frequent requesters, but students (7), executives (6), and lawyers (5) were active as well. Over 25 requesters in our study did not identify their organization.
The role of AI in government has been a hot topic in recent years, but President Trump immediately put the pedal to the metal. His third day in office, January 23, he signed Executive Order 14179, Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, which revoked former President Biden’s 2023 AI Executive Order and signaled a shift toward less government oversight and regulation of the technology.
On July 23, the White House introduced the Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan, which identified over 90 Federal policy actions to usher in “a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people.”
Agency and department heads have gotten with the program, rapidly approving and implementing significant new AI policies and practices.
The Food and Drug Administration’s actions illustrate the new role of AI. On May 8, FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary announced an aggressive plan to scale use of AI across all FDA centers by June 30. He followed on June 2 with the launching of Elsa, a generative AI tool designed to “help employees—from scientific reviewers to investigators—work more efficiently [and] better serve the American people.”
Elsa has quickly become the subject of multiple FOIA requests. Roderick Law of the Functional Government Initiative submitted several requests on June 4 seeking “all records of reviews, studies, development, analysis, and discussion of the generative artificial intelligence system referenced in the May 8, 2025, FDA press release.” Law submitted similar requests to several units of the FDA, including the Human Foods Program and the Center for Tobacco Products.
Philip E. M. Crooker of Pistevo Law LLC on June 4 asked for “all records in any format regarding the development, training and use of ELSA … for the review of investigational (IND, INAD, JINAD) and marketing applications (NDA, ANDA, NADA, ANADA) and use for planning, performing and evaluating routine surveillance, pre-approval and for-cause drug inspections in VCM and CDER. All records in any format regarding the development, training and use of ELSA for planning, performing and evaluating compounding inspections in CDER.”
Aaron Siri of plaintiff’s law firm Siri & Glimstad LLP on June 11 requested “all manuals, policies, guidance, handbooks, directives, memos, notices, and standard operating procedures concerning Elsa (the artificial intelligence tool used by FDA).” These types of requests have sometimes yielded dramatic results in past litigation. In the firm’s case against Pfizer, the judge’s opinion noted that “the FDA has produced some 1,200,874 pages of responsive records.”
Siri & Glimstad has long used FOIA requests in its litigation efforts. The firm states on its website that it has filed 2,200 FOIA requests with 25 federal agencies. Last year we reported that the firm submitted 162 FOIA requests to the FDA in 2023, the most of any law firm.
Other AI-related FOIA requests this year have addressed a wide range of issues, including the government’s plans to use AI in K-12 public education, the vulnerability of AI companies to attacks on underseas cables, the government’s use of AI-equipped drones, reports of AI-influenced suicides, the use of AI to target agency personnel cuts, and bias and discrimination in AI systems:
- Emily Forlini of PCMag on July 18 requested from the Federal Communications Commission “all records from 2025 related to the attack of undersea cables, reports on threats, and recent documents related to protecting them. I’m also interested in any records related to Big Tech companies (Meta, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, etc.) as it relates to undersea cables and AI infrastructure.”
- On May 12, Saisahan Tirukovalluru, a student at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, Illinois, requested from the Department of Education “copies of any documents, reports, contracts, policies, emails, or other records from January 2022 to the present related to the Department of Education’s use or consideration of artificial intelligence technologies in K-12 public education. Specifically, I am seeking information about AI tools used for student assessment, grading, learning support, data analysis, or tracking. I am also requesting … any internal communications, memos, or policy documents discussing the implementation, regulation, or ethical use of AI in schools.”
- At Customs and Border Protection, John Greenewald of The Black Vault on May 28 submitted a request for “all policy memoranda, technical evaluations, internal assessments, or procurement records relating to the testing, evaluation, or deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) systems used … for border surveillance or migrant detection.”
- Reece Rogers of WIRED on August 29 requested from the Federal Trade Commission “consumer complaints concerning chatbot or ChatGPT or Character AI of Meta AI and Suicide or self-harm.”
- Aaron Gordon of Bloomberg News on August 20 requested from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission “any and all training materials referring or relating to the ‘AI Deregulation Decision Tool.’”
- Emily Holshouser of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University on July 23 requested from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration “copies of audits or assessments of artificial intelligence models conducted internally … or by external groups, focused on such common areas as (but not exclusive of): harmful bias and discrimination, effectiveness and validity, data protection and privacy, and transparency and explainability.”
It is notable that FOIA requesters have begun to ask agencies to provide transcripts of their staff’s AI chats, along with the many other forms of communication that are targeted. This is exemplified by a request submitted on March 17 to the Treasury Department by Michael Keller of The New York Times seeking “all transcripts of chats between Conor Fennessy who, according to news reports, is a recent employee, appointee or detailee at your agency from the Department of Government Efficiency and any generative artificial intelligence (AI) system, including but not limited to: Grok by xAI, Gemini by Google, Llama by Meta, Deepseek, Qwen, Claude by Anthropic, ChatGPT by OpenAI, Perplexity and any other large language models made by these companies.”
FOIAengine is the only source for the most comprehensive, fully searchable archive of FOIA requests across over 40 federal departments and agencies. FOIAengine has more robust functionality and searching capabilities and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. Learn more about FOIAengine here. Sign up here to become a trial user of FOIAengine.
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Randy E. Miller, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington lawyer, publisher, and former government official. He has developed several online information products and was a partner at Hogan Lovells, where he founded the firm’s Brussels office and represented clients on international regulatory matters. Miller also has served as a White House trade lawyer, Senior Legal Adviser to the U.S. Mission to the World Trade Organization, policy director to Senator Bob Dole, and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Yale and Georgetown Law. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Miller and Washington journalist John A. Jenkins. Write to Randy E. Miller at randy@poliscio.com.
