CDT works to ensure AI is designed, deployed, and regulated responsibly — advising companies, researchers, and policymakers so AI's benefits reach everyone without compromising privacy or fundamental rights.
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CDT works across issue areas to ensure artificial intelligence develops in ways that respect civil rights and democratic values. We push for policies that protect human rights when it comes to AI use in government surveillance, elections, government benefits, hiring and insurance decisions, and online speech.
Our work translates high-level principles into practical guidance, helping organizations build safety and accountability into AI systems from the start, while supporting public interest advocates and researchers working on fairness and transparency. CDT also studies AI’s real-world impact through original research and shapes legislation at the state, federal, and EU level.
CDT bridges groups focused on civil liberties and human rights, industry practitioners, leaders at the frontier labs, free market groups, and the broader AI ethics and AI safety communities. By engaging directly with companies, advising policymakers at every level of government, and centering the experiences of communities, CDT works to ensure AI’s benefits are broadly shared and its design remains accountable to the people it affects.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
Talking Tech with Roy Austin & Alex Givens on The Future of AI Governance
In this episode of CDT’s Tech Talks, Roy L. Austin, Jr., inaugural director of Howard University School of Law’s AI Initiative, joins Alexandra Givens, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, to discuss the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of AI.
CDT-led Coalition Calls for Transparency for White House AI Framework
CDT and Americans for Responsible Innovation led a broad, bipartisan coalition of over two dozen civil society groups in calling on the White House to release its Framework for review of frontier AI models.
Comment to House Financial Services Committee on Regulation of AI
CDT submitted comments on the application of current federal laws and regulations related to the use of AI in the financial marketplace and any proposed reforms to provide for an appropriately modernized and comprehensive federal financial AI framework.
The 2026 legislative session has shown a continued but shifted focus on the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), with most bills — both introduced and passed — grappling with the rise and use of chatbots in a variety of contexts.
Will the Open Internet Survive the War on Bots? Mapping the Debate Over “AI Preferences”
When should individuals and organizations be able to use automated tools or “bots” to collect data from or interact with openly published websites — whether we call it “scraping”, “crawling,” or simply automated data collection?
How Policymakers Can Address AI Auditing and Assessment Requirements
As more state policymakers consider third-party AI auditing or assessment requirements, these policies face important challenges to their effectiveness.
The FTC’s proposed framework wrongly treats standard technical steps that are needed to train AI models, and ensure they are accurate, reliable, fair, and safe, as potential “deceptive steering” away from an assumed “neutral” baseline.
AI Governance Lab
CDT’s AI Governance Lab develops practical, technically-grounded approaches for AI auditing, safety, and accountability — engaging directly with companies and policymakers to protect people most affected by AI.
