FOI changes necessary because of AI-powered applications during 2020 Trump loss: government
The Albanese government has used an unusual reference to Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to justify its major crackdown on Freedom of Information laws.
The Albanese government has used an unusual reference to Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to justify its major crackdown on Freedom of Information laws, failing to point to any domestic examples of artificial intelligence driving vexatious claims for government documents.
The proposed changes – which would curtail access to government information – have been criticised across the political spectrum from the Greens, the teal independents and the Coalition.
In the latest blow for the changes, Labor has been unable to produce one domestic example of AI being used to generate vexatious FOI applications, despite citing AI as a key justification.
The Attorney-General’s Department did point to an unsubstantiated international example – “there are clear examples in international jurisdictions where AI tools have been used to generate thousands of FOI requests, including election workers being inundated with FOI requests in the 2020 presidential election”, it said.
That US election was two years before ChatGPT’s launch put AI into public consciousness. The department did not expand on its claim and did not provide evidence or reports of this. Notably, the department has previously pointed to a US magazine article that merely hypothesised AI could be used in such a way.
“Election workers are drowning in records requests. AI chatbots could make it worse,” read the headline of a WIRED magazine article in an email chain titled “talking points” between ministerial and department staff, in documents previously produced to the Senate.
Otherwise, the department could not provide any examples of AI being used to generate malicious FOI applications when asked to back up its claims.
“Why did government ministers claim AI bots were lodging malicious FOI requests when there was no evidence to support such a claim?” Labor-turned-independent senator Fatima Payman asked the Attorney-General’s Department on Senate estimates questions on notice.
“It may be difficult to identify when a request has been generated using AI,” the department said.
It strikes a different tone from that of Anthony Albanese months ago when the changes were first floated.
“We’ll make sure that issues such as the eSafety Commissioner, who, for example, in 2023-24, saw a more than a 2000 per cent increase in FOI requests compared to the previous year – artificial intelligence means it is possible for someone who wants to disrupt an agency completely and bring it to a halt is able to do so,” the Prime Minister told the House of Representatives in September.
“Governments have to respond to changes in technology. That is what we are doing.”
That “more than a 2000 per cent increase” to the eSafety Commissioner cited by Mr Albanese was actually a write-in campaign by conservative political campaign group Free Speech Union of Australia that generated “over 500” requests to the internet safety tsar, the Attorney-General’s Department said.
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