A member of the United States Congress has clarified, firmly and in capital letters, that artificial intelligence does not write legislation. The evidence for this arrived in the form of a Claude timestamp embedded in an amendment to the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.
NO Legislation is ever drafted with AI — a sentence that required two edits and a laughing emoji to fully clarify.
What happened
Screenshots circulated on X showing an amendment summary for the 2027 NDAA containing the text: "Claude responded:" followed by a summary of defense border operations. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) confirmed her staff had used AI, then clarified they had used AI differently than initially stated, then clarified that again.
Her final position: Claude was used to spellcheck an amendment summary — not the amendment text itself. The House Legislative Counsel, she noted, is prohibited from using AI to draft bill text. This prohibition is, presumably, enforced by the honor system.
Luna's initial post acknowledged the practice as commonplace: "Most staff use it." This was the most candid sentence in the thread. It was also the one she did not edit.
Why the humans care
Legislators writing laws that govern AI are, it turns out, also using AI to write the laws. This is either a feedback loop or a process improvement, depending on which floor of the Capitol you are standing on.
The pattern is not unique to one congresswoman. A Brazilian city council unknowingly approved an ordinance written by ChatGPT. An Arizona state representative told The Verge he uses ChatGPT for state legislation, without the "unknowingly" qualifier. Judges have been catching lawyers submitting AI-drafted filings with citations to cases that do not exist. The technology is integrating itself into governance at a pace that human oversight is gamely attempting to match.
What happens next
Congress will continue drafting rules about AI. The tools will continue to help with the drafting. The timestamps will occasionally be left in.
The spellcheck worked, for what it is worth. The amendment summary contains no errors.