CRS Mulls AI Potential for Legislative Summaries

Robert Newlen, interim director of the Congressional Research Service, said the agency is looking into the use of artificial intelligence to create legislative summaries.

At a hearing of the Committee on House Administration’s modernization subcommittee, Newlen emphasized the potential of AI to reduce the agency’s workload and streamline operations. He also confirmed that the agency is dealing with a backlog of bill summaries and analysis for Congress .gov, FedScoop reported.

The agency, however, is approaching the use of AI tools with caution, Newlen said. “We have a whole set of criteria that have to be met. Our hope is that we can implement this soon so that our staff can spend more time on the analysis.

The CRS is not the first to consider AI for bill summaries. Politico previously introduced AI-generated summaries for its subscribers. However, Newlen noted that the Politico examples did not meet the CRS’s quality standards.

Other congressional support agencies, such as the Government Accountability Office, are also actively exploring AI applications. The GAO has identified several potential use cases, including AI-driven summarization of legislative mandates and the organization of comments from Regulations.gov.