������ýapp�ٷ�

This week, FIREfiled a “friend-of-the-court” brief in Garcia v. Character Technologies urging immediate review of a federal court’s refusal to recognize the First Amendment implications of AI-generated speech.

The plaintiff in the  is the mother of a teenage boy who committed suicide after interacting with an AI chatbot modeled on the character Daenerys Targaryen from the popular fantasy series Game of Thrones. The suit alleges the interactions with the chatbot, one of hundreds of chatbots hosted on defendant Character Technologies’ platform, caused the teenager’s death. 

Character Technologies  the lawsuit, arguing among other things that the First Amendment protects chatbot outputs and bars the lawsuit’s claims. A federal district court in Orlando , and in doing so stated it was “not prepared to hold that the Character A.I. LLM's output is speech.” 

FIRE’s brief argues the court failed to appreciate the free speech implications of its decision, which breaks with a well-established tradition of applying the First Amendment to new technologies with the same strength and scope as applies to established communication methods like the printing press or even the humble town square. The significant ramifications of this error for the future of free speech make it important for higher courts to provide immediate input.

Contrary to the court’s uncertainty about whether “words strung together by an LLM” are speech, assembling words to convey messages and information is the essence of speech. And, save for a limited number of carefully defined exceptions, the First Amendment protects speech — regardless of the tool used to create, produce, or transmit it.  

As we told the court, it’s important to answer questions about the First Amendment’s application quickly and fully. Not just to minimize the impact on the parties to the case, but to avoid uncertainty about the First Amendment’s reach that would chill expression more broadly. 

That clarity is especially important when the case presents novel issues about an emerging technology. Early decisions in cases about new expressive technologies influence the development of jurisprudence, sometimes becoming accepted “defaults” for decades. For example, the development of Section 230 jurisprudence was  by the early  case, which still provides the generally accepted interpretation of that law nearly two decades later. Fortunately, the Zeran court got it right. But if the decision in Garcia has a similar impact, expressive rights are in serious trouble.

Delaying review of the district court’s decision will chill a great deal of expression while the case otherwise winds toward an appealable decision — particularly given the implications of holding AI outputs are not speech. If that endures, the government would have vast power, without any constitutional limit, to regulate what we may say, how (and how effectively) we may say it, and even what we know and how we may learn it.

Whether AI output is speech is a question with profound implications. If it is not speech, plaintiffs will be able to impose liability for the distribution of ideas in a way that courts have steadfastly . 

The district court’s analysis bypassed these issues and gave the First Amendment question far less consideration than it deserved. This warrants the immediate intervention of an appellate court to approach this issue with a level of rigor befitting the paramount constitutional principle at stake.