How federal agencies responded to our requests about AI use in FOIA

As we’ve watched AI spread to new horizons, we wondered how much it has spread into federal agencies’ processes for responding to FOIAs.

Through our AI in FOIA project, we’ve found that one agency explored using AI to identify and automate redaction of exempt information. Others indicated that they used AI, but claimed they had no records responsive to our FOIA requests.

Each year, federal agencies that receive more than 50 FOIA requests are required to submit Chief FOIA Officer Reports to the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy (OIP). These reports detail their practices, technology usage and FOIA compliance.

Since 2023, the OIP has included a new question: “Does your agency currently use any technology to automate record processing? For example, does your agency use machine learning, predictive coding, technology assisted review or similar tools to conduct searches or make redactions?”

We called on our volunteers to comb through the agencies’ 2024 reports, and discovered that some agencies are actively using or considering using machine learning to process FOIA requests. The uses ranged from common e-discovery software to declassification review to auto-redaction tools.

Thanks to a 2020 Executive Order, agencies that use machine learning are also required to “monitor, audit and document compliance” of any AI use.

What we requested

We filed over a dozen requests in January to seven agencies that our volunteers identified as using or exploring AI tools for FOIA processing. For each agency, we requested a variety of records: safety assessments, internal audits, marketing materials, contracts, pilot programs, licensing agreements, terms of service and other documents related to the AI tools referenced in their 2024 reports.

More than three months later, only one request has yielded a substantive response. It came from the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). CPSC is one of the agencies that reported exploring, but not currently using, AI in their Chief FOIA Officer reports. The agency said that they were in the process of engaging with a software vendor for the possible purchase of an AI tool.

In response to our request for marketing materials and vendor documentation, CPSC shared 49 pages of emails, presentation decks and user guides for the MITRE FOIA Assistant tool. MITRE advertises in its marketing materials that its FOIA automated assistant can aid in the identification of exemptions, particularly for monetary numbers, personally identifiable information and deliberative language.

According to the records, the MITRE tool flags “commercial or financial information, such as money figures” under FOIA exemption (b)(4), “deliberative sentences” under (b)(5) and names, phones and emails under (b)(6). FOIA officers can then accept, modify or reject suggestions, as well as suggest custom text-matching rules.

The correspondence dates from January and June of 2023, but no MITRE contract or licensing agreement appears to have been signed since then. CPSC reported in its 2025 Chief FOIA Officer Report that they do not currently use AI tools, but “would like to obtain additional technology once we have the budget.”

Because CPSC can’t yet afford to purchase the AI tool they explored, our request for documentation of audits and monitoring came back as yielding no responsive records.

Non-response suggesting noncompliance

While CPSC said they had no responsive records, we also received that response from the Department of Commerce and Department of the Treasury, even though they had both referenced using AI tools in their FOIA reports.

Specifically, the Treasury Department stated that some bureaus “have incorporated e-Discovery software into their FOIA workflow, which leverages automation to streamline responsiveness reviews of voluminous records.” The report did not specify what vendors provide the e-discovery software.

The Commerce Department was more specific, stating that certain departments within the agency use the following tools:

Relativity eDiscovery platform;
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery;
FOIAXpress’ tagging, batching, and deduplication capabilities; and
A secondary eDiscovery license through Veritas Clearwell (NOAA).

However, both agencies claim not to have any records documenting vendor relationships. Their lack of response to our requests regarding their monitoring and auditing of AI products suggests noncompliance with the executive order or inaccuracies in the information submitted to the OIP.

As of publication, the Treasury Department has not responded to requests for comment regarding these inconsistencies. The Department of Commerce declined to provide an on-the-record explanation.

In limbo

Our requests to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, State Department and National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) all await further response. According to MuckRock’s data, each of these agencies have an average response time of over 200 days.

In January, the Department of Justice assigned our request for vendor contracts to its “simple track,” but has still not acknowledged our request for audits and monitoring records. NARA acknowledged both requests, but stated that they would be completed within an estimated 38 months, by mid June 2028.