cybersecurity. the senate rules committee hearing is about an hour.

>> calling this hearing to order. good afternoon. i would like to thank ranking member fisher, as always, and our colleagues for putting this together. with us today is dr. carla hayden, who is the librarian of congress. we always enjoy having you here. also here is the director of the government publishing office, back again. thank you. as well as the deputy secretary and chief operating officer of the smithsonian. we understand the secretary is bill -- he will recover, but was

not able to make it, so we appreciate it. today, we will talk about the very important topic of artificial intelligence and the agencies that play such a critical role in serving the american people. ai has the potential, as we know, to lead to incredible innovation by supercharging scientific research, improving access to information, and increasing productivity, but like any emerging technology, ai comes with significant risk, and our laws need to be as sophisticated as the potential threats are there to our own democracy. understanding these risks and benefits has been a major bipartisan focus of the senate with senators leading a series of nine quorums since the fall, and a number of various committees working on proposals

so that we will be ready when this hits. i think as you all saw from the reports of the robo calls in new hampshire with the fake voice of the president of are other things that have affected candidates on the aisle, this is not something that will affect one side or the other. it is something we as congress have to deal with with some guardrails, and that includes the work that goes on in these agencies. at our hearing in september, witnesses agreed that ai poses risks to our elections. we heard testimony on why we must work to put guardrails in place. that is why i am leading a bipartisan bill with senate colleagues to prohibit fraudulent ai-generated content

in our elections within the framework of the constitution. for instance, allowing for satire and the like and why we need to take up disclaimers on ads that use ai, so the citizens of this country can actually believe that it is their own candidate or their opposing candidate who is speaking. another example of legislation going on, senator thune and i have joined together introducing a bill to put in place common sense safeguards for non-different applications of ai and improved transparency. i see that senator tabet oh is here. she has also joined us. the library of congress, government publishing office, and the smithsonian.

while it is important that our three witnesses today speak to measures they are taking to safeguard against potential harm, they are also, i think, important to note, using ai technology in their work to protect our country's greatest treasures and improve public access to information. for example, the library of congress is testing emerging ai technology to expand how researchers can better use the resources they already house in their collections, such as a new ai tool that lets users instantly search through 1.5 6 million -- 1.50 6 million images -- 1.56 one million images.

as part of its work, producing government documents, gpo is using ai to ensure quality control of items such as the material used to print passports. it printed 22 million, as we learned at the last hearing last year. finally at the smithsonian, which is the world's largest museum, education, and research complex, researchers are exploring how to use ai to do things like tackle some of the most challenging problems in astrophysics, classified species of fish in the amazon and make collections more accessible, accurately identifying the contributions of women -- i like this one -- in historical texts

in which they were often identified by only their husbands' names. that will be interesting when you discover what they are. we must continue working to stay ahead of the curve, and i'm committed to working in a bipartisan way with senator fischer so our country can benefit and your agency can benefit from the best of ai while protecting against any threats. thank you again and i will turn it over to senator fischer. >> thank you for calling this hearing on the use of artificial intelligence at the library of congress, and the smithsonian. i also want to thank our three witnesses who are here today. i know we are all wishing the secretary a speedy recovery. i believe this is the first time the committee has heard from the library of congress, the government publishing office, and the smithsonian at the same time. director, nice to see you back with us so soon.

the library of congress and the smithsonian both -- both safeguard our nation's treasures. welcome to your building to learn and explore and serve as crucial resources to the academic and scientific community. this is the rules committee's second hearing on the use of ai. as we discussed at the first hearing, there is no question that ai is transformative and poised to evolve rapidly. while ai brings the possibility of creating efficiencies and competitive advantages across government, it also creates risks. understanding and weighing the benefits and risks of ai are necessary first steps before

widely adopting the use of ai. i look forward to hearing from witnesses about how our legislative branch agencies are exploring potential applications of ai. there are many important questions to ask, such as if these are specific issues or specific challenges at our legislative branch agencies that ai can solve. are there existing services that our agencies provide that ai could improve? can ai provide new avenues for these agencies so that you can fulfill your missions? i also look forward to hearing about the guardrails our agencies are putting in place to mitigate those risks of ai. we need to understand the cost of ai and its impact on agency budgets. just as importantly, agencies need to understand the implications of ai use, especially the risk related to

privacy. understanding legislative branch agencies' use of ai is an important oversight question for this committee. that said, we cannot lose sight of existing challenges facing the agencies we oversee. as the library looks to hire a new director for the congressional research service and gpo looks to maintain high quality staffing standards in the face of your retiring workforce, it is important that this committee supports their efforts to improve hiring and retention efforts. furthermore, the smithsonian endeavors to establish two new museums authorized by statute. we must maintain rigorous oversight of their efforts to tackle a deferred maintenance backlog, a chronic issue for that agency. with that said, i look forward to a productive discussion about

our legislative branch's use of ai. >> thank you so much, senator fischer. i will introduce our witnesses. our first witness, as i noted, is library and up congress, dr. carla hayden. she was sworn in in 2016. she has done a tremendous job leading the library and previously served as ceo of in upfront free library in baltimore and received her undergrad, masters, and phd from the university of chicago that i also attended. our second witness is director of the government publishing office who has been in his position since his unanimous

confirmation -- it does not happen all the time -- by the senate in december 2019. he previously worked on capitol hill for more than 30 years including for former speaker paul ryan, and he received his bachelors and masters degree from american university. thank you and we really enjoyed your attendance at your last hearing. our final witness became deputy secretary and chief operating officer of the smithsonian in 2019. previously she worked for 27 years at the cia. i did not know that. when i read these bios, i learned these things all the time. , including as executive director and chief operating officer, and she received her undergraduate degree from georgetown. now we are going to swear in the witnesses. thank you. raise your right hand.

do you swear the testimony will give before the committee shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? thank you. you may be seated. we will now proceed to five-minute testimonies. we will start with dr. hayden. >> thank you for this invitation to appear before you to discuss a topic that is of great interest across the government and within the archive sector, artificial intelligence. i'm pleased to have the opportunity to further engage with my legislative ranch colleagues on this topic and to update the committee on the library's activities exploring ai. at the library, there are four areas of focus of ai -- to expand access to our collections, to enhance services for users, to improve internal processes for increased efficiency, and to implement

strong governance for the use of ai. becoming a more digitally enabled agency has been a key focus of my tenure as librarian and in 2019 the library published a comprehensive digital strategy to guide the agency's issues of technology in an increasingly digital world. building on this first major step, we have now fully integrated our digital strategy into our 2024-2028 strategic plan, which embraces a strategic idea that technology must be as our cio says baked into all we do. since 2018, the library's digital innovation division has investigated ai and shared results of its research experiments with the public. working with digital researchers we call innovators in residence, the love has made its mark as a launchpad for innovative and

engaging uses of ai to expand access ai to expand our collections. a popular example is citizen dj, a music sampling application that allows users to remix non-rights restricted audio from the library. also machine learning and ocr to manage better data and machine readable text for digitized documents. for example. ocr has increased the discoverability of more than 20 million historic american newspaper pages through the chronicling america projects. building on that technology, users can also search those historic newspapers for photos using an application rolled out in 2020 called newspaper navigator.

enhancing services to congress and the public is also a major area of focus. in 2022 we released an application for interface to make it easier for the public to use legislative data. additionally, several library service units are successfully demonstrating ai's use in bolstering the libraries information services. our digital innovators have been working with the copyright office to test approaches for extracting data from historical copyright records. this project combines human skills with ai capacity to make a written or handwritten analog written -- analog record more accessible and easier to search

online. it's one more example of how humans in the loop can be the model for ai and successful integration of technology with human skills. a very important principle is that well-trained human beings will always be critical to the work of the library of congress. the libraries ai use cases have also been testing opportunity for efficiency and staff productivity. our cataloging division is currently experimenting with ai to help staff process more efficiently bibliographic information and cataloging records. there are many opportunities with ai but there alsot be, must be robust governance. the library is in a strong position as our existing technology governance policies provide an adaptable foundation to use in guiding us with

emerging technologies like ai. further, the libraries approach to implementing ai closely aligns with the practices of other federal institutions and is informed by the ai risk management framework that also aims to improve the trustworthiness of ai applications. responding to this fast developing area of technology calls for collaboration across the private sector and government, which is why the library participates in the general services administration ai community of practice and is a leading member of the international artificial intelligence library archives and museums secretariat. to conclude, discovering the role ai has to play in enhancing services to congress and other users remains an ongoing effort, and as the library of congress charges forward, we plan to draw

on our history of technological innovations and our rigorous development standards and the input of our stakeholders and partners to align possible uses for the public. we appreciate this opportunity and we hope you will join with us in making sure the values of transparency, accountability and efficacy remain as we explore this opportunity. chair klobuchar: thank you. mr. halpern. dir. halpern: good afternoon, always good to see you. i am pleased to appear before you today to share some of the potential uses of ai and related technologies at the government publishing office. we differ in that we are fundamentally a manufacturing

operation, we publish and maintain materials for all three branches of government. our 1600 craftspeople and professionals produce virtually all of congress's documents along with numerous other publications and manufacture secure, credentialed products. we also provide digital information. we have our own digital repository, or we serve the library. gpo's operations are just as susceptible to disruption as any commercial firms. that's not necessarily a bad thing. my written testimony describes gpo's policy on these tools. my focus today will be three potential applications for ai and related applications in

day-to-day applications for we think this can improve quality assurance by automatically recognizing defects a human might miss. we already use a rudimentary form of this technology in the production of the current version of the u.s. passport. gpo uses equipment that optically scans the pages that will become the identity page for a personalized passport. this equipment looks at each strip of three pages for variances that exceed the specifications for the material and rejects those pages that don't conform to the standard. ai technology has the potential to further refine this review, allowing machines to learn what may constitute a varick -- a variation within the specification and what is not. this can reduce defect rates, lower waist and free of our quality assurance team to focus on solving bigger quality problems as they arise.

second, we see tremendous potential for supplementing our proofreading team. proofreaders are very difficult to hire and we need to free them from making routine, repetitive corrections and allow them to focus on more subtle issues that require a human being to interpret. one example is capitalization. gpo style says we capitalize the letter s in the word state when we are referring to a political subdivision of the united states. currently we use computer scripts that perform global search and replace functions on documents to correct our most common errors, including that one. but those scripts are really blunt instruments. they can't tell the difference between the state of minnesota and a new york state of mind. ai holds the promise of tools that understand context and no

wind text refers to one kind of state or the other. that will cut down on the need for proofreaders to review and a river view then correct material that has already been run through our automated tools and free them up to focus on more difficult, contextual issues. my final example comes from gpo's public information mission. we've had great success making congressional he mandated reports publicly available since the end of last year with more than 180 of those reports available on gun.info as of yesterday. most of those reports come to us as pdfs. while that is a good format to show how the printed document looks, it's not always the best format for viewing on a phone, tablet or even for folks with disabilities. while gpo would like to get these reports in more flexible formats, the agency is --

agency's art always able to submit them that way. we can produce an alternative view that works on different types of devices without manual, time-consuming work from our team. these are just three examples where we see applications in gpo's operations and we are considering many pilots in the future. all of these are intended to act as a force multiplier for our team, allowing our folks to be more productive and deliver a higher value for our customers and taxpayer. madam chairwoman, ranking member fisher, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i look forward to any questions the committee may have. chair klobuchar: thank you very much. last but not least, ms. park. ms. park: thank you. i will pass along your well

wishes to the secretary. early in our time as an institution, we collected meteorological data from volunteers nationwide via telegraph. fast forward to a few years ago when we helped create the first image of a black hole at the center of the milky way. in short, we've always embraced revolutionary technology from the locomotive to the pocket watch to the telegraph to the internet and artificial intelligence is no different. throughout the institution, scientific uses of machine learning are quite common. applying it to the identification of exoplanets, tracing the history of pollen and conducting field research in conservation. artificial intelligence has been around the smithsonian for almost a decade. what has changed is the widespread availability of generative ai.

these widely available applications of ai hold great promise, for making us more efficient and effective as an organization, to improving the visitor experience and extending our reach across the nation. we are learning from our current use cases and exploring new ones as this technology continues to evolve. for example, the national museum of african-american history and culture's freedmen's bureau transcription project, which is our largest crowdsourcing initiative, is transcribing genealogical records of the formally -- formerly enslaved. in a test, ai lightly transcribed roughly two thirds of the content, showing how ai can dramatically scale up work with large data sets. other examples, including, as the chairwoman mentioned in her

opening remarks, our development of a model that can discover and correct women's contributions mistakenly contributed to men and our elections. in the astrophysical observatory's center, there are more than 50 ai products planned or underway, creating excitement about our solar system and the universe itself. inns -- inside this missoni and we recently announced a practice that will help us test capabilities across the institution as well as a framework for good governance to determine the best way to use ai effectively and responsibly. people rely on our reputation as a trustworthy reservoir of knowledge. we understand concerns about bias, ethics, safety and accuracy in available ai outcomes.

there are fantastic opportunities as well. we and other cultural institutions can collaborate with technology leaders to improve ai tools for everyone. we can also examine the many dimensions of ai from a scholarly perspective, convening experts to examine this ethical, social and economic implications. the nation's 250th birthday in 2026 will be a pivotal moment to experience -- experiment with ai tools. to enable collaboration with tech leaders and other government and cultural organizations to make ai more reliable and trustworthy. to educate people about the benefits and the risks of ai. ultimately ai is a tool. used properly it will allow the smithsonian to expand our reach and impact. like any new technology, it comes with risks and the

potential for unintended consequences. but by developing internal expertise in partnering with external experts, can thoughtfully leverage ai both for the smithsonian and the american public. thank you. chair klobuchar: thank you very much. i'm going to turn it over to senator fischer for her questions. sen. fisher: thank you for being here today. can you share whether your respective agencies have an official policy on governing ai? dr. hayden: yes, the library has a number of policies for i.t. security in general and we have an ai working group that has developed guidelines and we also follow missed framework and we

are very cognizant and use the executive orders. we are very, i would say zealous , in making sure we have those frameworks and guidelines. sen. fischer: you mentioned in your oral testimony and your written as well about mist, it aims to improve the trustworthiness of ai applications. can you give me an example of how that would be used? i think a lot of us when we think of ai, we don't get down to the nitty-gritty, we don't get down to the basics of what it really can do, we just think it's going to be so wonderful, we will be sorting data. i think some of your answers from all of you would be very helpful. dr. hayden: one of the through lines for each one of us is trustworthiness.

at the library of congress we take very seriously being stewards of historic information , that we are a trusted source. working with the framework that includes looking at a new technology -- you map, explore and measure its usefulness and effectiveness. then if it passes quite a few of these things, you would look at how you could implement it. being able to make sure, and having these templates, we have questions we pose when anything is being proposed, but ai in particular. what does it do, how can we make sure humans are in the loop for that quality control? it is a very important part of looking at ai in particular and any new technology. sen. fischer: thank you. mr. halpern, do you have a

policy? dir. halpern: absolutely, we have a directive in place since the end of 2023. one of the things that created was our ai guidance committee, and i believe that committee will have its first kickoff meeting on monday, where they will start evaluating different technologies for some pilot appointments -- deployments in the near term. sen. fischer: you mentioned in your testimony a lot of the three interesting examples of how you're using ai right now. how do you decide on a case to case basis when you are ready to test that? on that project, whether you think it is safe at that point in time, or if you are just

trying to gather information? dir. halpern: we already have a very robust system for evaluating software and hardware for deployment at gpo. much of what we do is mission-critical to congress so we need to make sure anything we deploy does not interfere with our ability to deliver for our customers, whether that is the house or senate, or the state department, or any other customer. this is another layer on top of that. looking at some of these new technologies, both to see if there are improvements to the way we do things that can deliver benefits to our customers, and minimize the risk from those same technologies, introducing variables into our product. sen. fischer: what does that

mean, the risk of introducing variables? dir. halpern: we've all read about the issues with chatgpt hallucinating facts that aren't there. the good news is gpo doesn't generate a lot of public information. we make other people's public information available. much of where we got -- we can leverage these technologies, it's really in the quality assurance world. but for the same reason you can't -- you need to double check chatgpt's outlook we need to make sure the optical system that is checking the quality of our passport identity pages isn't introducing or missing quality problems. from that perspective, we really

need to put these systems, deploy them in a limited way so we can make sure they are doing what they are advertised to do so we aren't delivering a product to our customer that is of lesser quality than it should be. sen. fischer: may we have the smithsonian response? ms. park: of course. i will address maybe two aspects of your question. internally at the smithsonian we are absolutely focused on governance and the sharing of best practices. this community of practice we've formed is designed to do a number of things. one is to identify policies we have that need to be updated with what is a quickly evolving technology, and also things like protecting privacy. you asked about specific examples of how does this play out in an organization. you have to make sure that if

employees are using chatgpt or some other generative ai tool that we are thinking about how that data is being prepared and made available to ai to analyze. there is a lot of thought going into how we do that internally. externally, we also have a public mandate, as several of my colleagues have talked about, as trusted sources for the american public. we want to make sure we are available to them, that we have our 177 years of experience with history, culture, science, education as a way to inform these tools and also as a way to help evaluate the accuracy of information. that is still aspirational for us at this point but we are thinking about both aspects, internal governance, internal opportunities for efficiency,

and our ability to help in the more public realm. sen. fischer: thank you. chair klobuchar: senator padilla? sen. padilla: california secretary of state, part of the priorities is the archives. we dramatically increased public assess -- access, and that involved digitizing the materials to make them easily viewable not just for the people of california but to the world. my first question is for ms. park. you know that priority asian -- prioritization of digitization

is one of your goals. ms. park: digitization is one of our priorities as an institution. we've been at it a while. it is a behemoth task with over 150 million objects. we are working hard to identify ways to prioritize that. we have a long way to go in terms of having those cheerios digitized, so when you refer to your expense in california, the first step is even getting the records available and readable and analyzable in a digital format. that's a job number one for us. the second part is we believe, unlike a search engine that would be able to help the public discover certain items we might have in our correction and learn about them, ai has the ability for the public to make connections among the documents and objects and items we have in

ways we cannot do as humans. that we can use generative ai, and we hope to make it available to the public as well, to discover things we didn't even realize we had in our collections. i think there are some really exciting opportunities, but as you noted, job one is getting more of our items digitized and readable. sen. padilla: so whatever is most popular is the place to start. when you get the metadata and the keywords right, just imagine. dr. hayden, same question to you. dr. hayden: the library has been really at the forefront in the

library field was looking at how digitized material can be made more discoverable, because if it's not discoverable, it's really not accessible. one of the projects i mentioned in my testimony is taking a 20 year project of digitizing and making available newspapers from all 50 states, but adding an ai instrument, a navigator. you can now do even more research into those newspapers. photos, names, all types of things. we've seen that has made what was just basically making things, putting them into digital form, from the vast amount of analog material we have and print material going back hundreds of years, just basically digitizing them, that is an accessible aspect, but

having tools for people to be able to get into them has been very popular, especially when we allow the public to use materials in a creative way like our citizen dj program. we put the material up there, music and all types of things and people can use them. these tools can be very helpful for having people make those connections between our various collections, we have collections in 470 languages. to use ai tools. sen. padilla: do you envision to always be contained within your respective institutions or are there opportunities for public-private partnerships? dr. hayden: the library of congress and smithsonian are

cochairing a secretariat this coming year that will look at ways we can all collaborate. of course opportunities with the private sector when we make sure there are guard -- guide rails. ms. park: i would just add that there are all sorts of opportunities work with external groups. higher education, companies, all are interested in this space. we have formed several consortiums with different organizations to figure out if we can convene together to talk about these kinds of issues, to provide space for people to discuss the complexities of ai. absolutely there are ways for us to partner with others. sen. padilla: thank you very much. chair klobuchar: very good, thank you. sen. haggerty: it's good to see all of our witnesses. dr. hayden, i'd like to start

with you. we know the ivory of congress houses the copyright office. you are in a unique position to ensure the proper implementation of ai and i think we all know ai offers many, some benefits but with its increasing prevalence is not without drawbacks. we've talked about my affinity to the songwriting business in my home state of tennessee. artist have the potential to be impacted by artificial intelligence. i'm worried about infringements on the works of copyright holders could cause serious damage to an artist's reputation and livelihood. earlier this month governor bill lee announced plans for legislation to protect the voices of performing artists by adding their voices and sound to tennessee's protection of

personal rights law. i'm pleased that tennessee is leading the nation in providing legal protection for artists and songwriters. my first question is given the growing pervasiveness of ai, how does the copyright artist plan to protect copyrighted works and voices at the federal level? dr. hayden: the copyright office has been in the forefront of looking at the issues involved with machine generated works. in fact, they have developed a separate webpage for people who are creators but just giving some much guidance on that. if hosted presentations and webinars. and our registrar of copyright just in the last year has been in many, many international copyright sessions. they just issued a rule to get

information and they had 10,000 responses. they will be issuing more information about what they are hearing from stakeholders about how that can really be used but also be protecting. sen. hagerty: in august, the copyright office issued a notice of inquiry on copyright and artificial intelligence, and it sought information and comments on the number of issues, including the use of copyrighted works to train ai models. you put the legal status of ai generated outlets in the appropriate treatment of ai generated list that mimic artist. i'm sure that many tennessee artists submitted, urging

implementation of many things. one, appropriate licenses or authorization to ingest or otherwise use material that's copyrighted. second, adequate record-keeping. and third, ensuring appropriate transparency is maintained by ai companies. are these remedies the types that the copyright office is considering? dr. hayden: the office is currently reviewing those comments, over 10,000. they are a full range. i have information that they are really looking at what could be infringements, the treatment of these type of ai generated infringements and currently they are preparing that report. sen. hagerty: the points are based are certainly of interest to our industry in tennessee.

the rights of artists are typically provided by state law. given this, in your opinion, are statutory changes needed to protect performing artists? dr. hayden: our registrar of copyright is very involved in that and she will be working with congress on developing any potential legislation or any other things that would impact the copyright law. right now it is producing works by human beings as a standard. sen. hagerty: i hope you will view my office as a resource and the people of tennessee as a resource, i think we can add significantly to the conversation. thank you. chair klobuchar: thank you. some of the risks of ai are already clear, i talked about what happened with the robo calls and what we are seeing

really in fake videos on both sides of the aisle. i know the republican attorney general is investigating what happened in new hampshire. but we know there are going to be other security issues, from our infrastructure, separate attacks. can you talk about what your agency has done to guard against cyber security threats so that your system remains strong in the face of potential ai threats? if each one of you could answer. dr. hayden: the library of congress with the help of congress has been able to build a very strong cybersecurity foundation over a number of years, and in fact we have a cybersecurity expert. that has been a major part in what we've been able to bring to looking at the risks with this

particular technology, ai. it fits into our i.t. governance framework already and we are making sure we are not on the cutting edge with ai, we are looking at using the experiences we have had, but there is a technology governance board within the library and ai now has a working group within that board to make sure everything is aligned with that. we are very concerned about the trustworthiness of products that have ai. chair klobuchar: very good. dir. halpern: absolutely. our team works so that our systems are as impregnable as possible. but we are also looking at some ai tools as helpful in those

efforts. one of the things that ai excels at is pattern matching. they might be able to see patterns in our logs and human being not -- might not readily identify. so that is a benefit. one of the other areas that is sort of tangentially related is in the privacy sphere. searching materials produced by others for personally identifiable information. just like many other organizations, we have had issues in the past where it has been hard for us to catch every incident of pii in our materials we make public, but these ai-based tools can recognize whether it is a social security number, address or another piece of pii in congressional records or anything else we publish could -- publish.

that's an additional layer of security these tools can help with the so we don't inadvertently put something out into the public domain that isn't supposed to be there. chair klobuchar: very good. ms. park: we take our cybersecurity responsibility very seriously, oath in terms of internal practices but also in terms of public domain. we do complying -- comply with mist standards, so our cio is checking constantly to make sure we are following those standards. our inspector general is also there to regularly check on our progress. the other thing we do is we regularly report and participate in federal forms where you share information about the latest threats that might be coming through various channels, including the emergence of ai and how it is being used.

for example, phishing has become much more sophisticated, ai can create much more easily emails and things that appear to be real. we are stepping up our testing of our own workforce and their ability to recognize these things. there's a lot of work going on. finally, there is an internal group led by our cio that is trying to develop or evolve our policy structure to make sure we are prepared for whatever threats that might be coming from emerging technologies, including ai. chair klobuchar: so, are you all taking part in cybersecurity training? you think that will be important as we see this changing world, both opportunities and risk, with your staff? ok. dir. halpern: absolutely. we are evaluating now specific

ai related training so that folks understand these tools, both the good and bad they can bring. dr. hayden: we have an annual training requirement for all staff that have access to our network. chair klobuchar: when you appeared before the committee last year we discussed the copyright office's initiative to evaluate issues raised by ai. what are the lessons learned by the copyright office over the past year and have they continued to see increases in the amount of copyright applications for ai generated content? dr. hayden: yes, they have a. -- they have. and they actually had a number of cases -- there have been about 100 works that had ai

generated and human authorship and they have been registered by the office. they are also taking a leadership role internationally when looking at what is the proportion of the ai generated content and human as well. they have definitely been at the forefront of looking at that. right now they have rejected several applications because of the amount of ai. chair klobuchar: one last question of you. your written testimony highlights testing potential ai tools for the national library service for the blind and print disabled, including improving book descriptions. we talked about this way back, what we've done with the blind. what has the library done to

make sure this content is accurate? dr. hayden: that's part of the lc labs, and there has been quite a bit of success with the e reader rollout. they are looking at how ai can be used to help this population? there are some exciting opportunities but they working hand-in-hand to make sure that what is being presented to that community is trustworthy. you see that is the main theme with i think all of us, we want to use this tool for a number of reasons for efficiency, effectiveness, but also we have to make sure there is that oversight. chair klobuchar: ok, ms. park,

you talked about identifying best practices and opportunity. could you talk about what next steps are and the timetable? ms. park: this group is charged with doing a number of things. the governance piece is important. we are doing policies and also finding what is working within the units, we have multiple museums and research institutes. figuring out where we can do some things at scale, i have asked for them to do their initial work and come back with some recommendations for what we might need to do in the short term, whether some of the immediate stopgaps that need to be put in place, whether it is governance or best practice related that we want to share. i expect there will be longer-term things that will take longer to address, whether it is systems related, as this

process or applications. i expect it to be a phased approach. chair klobuchar: my last question, since judy garland's shoes came up, do you know where she was born? ms. park: oh no, this is a quiz. i was going to say minnesota. chair klobuchar: they just solved the crime of the missing shoes, finally. they have been returned to the third story. they are back. in any case, thank you very much. you want to ask any other questions, senator fischer? we have a vote that's been called, and thank you for the work you have been doing and continuing to do leading your agency's. speaking for myself, and i know other members of the committee will feel good about your stewardship of these very important agencies and we look forward to working with you on

the important work you are doing as we discussed opportunities and risks. the hearing record will remain open for one week and we are adjourned. [gavel] thank you. [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations]

[indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations]

[indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations]

[indistinct conversations]