‘It’s Absolutely Terrifying’: AI Is Reportedly Slopping Up the Bills in Congress

Four anonymous congressional staffers told Politico that AI-generated text is increasingly appearing in bills drafted for Congress, with one calling it 'absolutely terrifying' because enacted bills become federal statutes. Warren Burke, who leads the Office of Legislative Counsel, reported that requests for legislation received by the office were up 72% in 2025 compared to two years earlier, and staffers say the office spends more time fixing AI-drafted legislation than drafting it from scratch. The report follows a June incident where Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) posted evidence suggesting Anthropic's Claude chatbot was used to draft or edit legislation.

Four anonymous congressional staffers who apparently help draft bills spoke to Politico https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/17/ai-slop-lawmakers-congress-01008376 for a story published Monday. They say AI-generated text is seeping into bills at an alarming rate—alarming, because when they pass, bills turn into the federal statutes that are part of the bedrock of American life. “It’s absolutely terrifying,” one of them told that publication. If the report is true, AI in the legislative process sounds like it does something similar to AI in the lawsuit-writing process https://gizmodo.com/random-people-armed-with-ai-and-no-lawyer-are-reportedly-filling-judicial-dockets-with-lawsuits-2000763269 : gives more people confidence to try and generate documents in jargon-heavy language that needs to be precise, while also making more work for the people who eventually have to read those documents. Last year while addressing the House https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP24/20250402/118080/HHRG-119-AP24-Wstate-BurkeW-20250402.pdf , Warren Burke, who leads congress’ Office of Legislative Counsel—a collection of mostly lawyers who format and draft laws, request for legislation received by the office were up 72% in 2025 compared to two years earlier. One of Politico’s anonymous staffers said people and organizations outside congress are a big part of the issue. They’re “going to Claude or ChatGPT to draft the legislative language itself,” the person said. They added that the OLC spends “more time trying to fix AI-drafted legislation than it would take for them to draft it from scratch.” In a puzzling and somewhat ambiguous incident in June, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, posted apparent evidence online that Anthropic’s Claude chatbot may have been used by a staffer to draft legislation. Later, she seemed to confirm that it had been used to at least edit a bill, https://gizmodo.com/maga-congresswoman-denies-using-ai-to-write-bill-love-claude-but-grok-is-way-more-savage-2000777136 but the tweet in which she said that was deleted and replaced with a tweet saying the chatbot was only used for a summary of the bill.