{"id":197468,"date":"2026-03-19T17:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/fights-for-public-records-rise-in-pa-sometimes-aided-by-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T17:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:35:11","slug":"fights-for-public-records-rise-in-pa-sometimes-aided-by-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/fights-for-public-records-rise-in-pa-sometimes-aided-by-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Fights for public records rise in Pa., sometimes aided by AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.witf.org\/2026\/03\/19\/fighting-for-public-records-is-more-common-in-pennsylvania-sometimes-aided-by-ai\/\">Fights for public records rise in Pa., sometimes aided by AI<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.witf.org\/2026\/03\/19\/fighting-for-public-records-is-more-common-in-pennsylvania-sometimes-aided-by-ai\/\">https:\/\/www.witf.org\/2026\/03\/19\/fighting-for-public-records-is-more-common-in-pennsylvania-sometimes-aided-by-ai\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-19 17:33:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.witf.org\">www.witf.org<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Rising Appeal for Public Records:<\/strong> The number of appeals for denied public records requests has significantly increased in Pennsylvania, partly due to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid in these appeals.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>AI in Record Appeals:<\/strong> Many appellants are using AI to help them contest denials, though it often results in &#8220;hallucinated&#8221; case law and citations.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Legislative Proposal:<\/strong> Senators Tracy Pennycuick and Rosemary Brown propose allowing agency record officers to deny requests likely generated by AI, though they suggest caution in addressing unverified AI use.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Public Awareness and Transparency:<\/strong> The increase in appeals reflects growing public awareness of their rights, indicating efforts towards greater government transparency despite significant barriers.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Volume and Type of Requests:<\/strong> County governments received the highest number of appeals, reflecting significant demand and resource constraints faced by local agencies in managing records requests.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Agency Defenses:<\/strong> Noncriminal and criminal investigative records, along with employee notes and draft documents, are commonly cited exemptions that pose significant barriers to public access.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Call for Reforms:<\/strong> Transparency advocates advocate for reforms that simplify access to information, such as allowing access to closed investigations, and addressing the abuse of extension rules to delay responses.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Local and State Agency Challenges:<\/strong> Agencies often take advantage of extended response times, which delays the release of information that should be publicly available.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fights for public records rise in Pa., sometimes aided by AI https:\/\/www.witf.org\/2026\/03\/19\/fighting-for-public-records-is-more-common-in-pennsylvania-sometimes-aided-by-ai\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-19&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.witf.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/01jd-ah86-718t-zjan-1280x854.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-197468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197470,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197468\/revisions\/197470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}