Artificial Intelligence and the Fourth Amendment: Two Emerging Legal Issues

designed to think or act like a human

performs tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances without significant human oversight

can learn from experience and improve performance when exposed to data sets.

The Fourth Amendment and AI

Law Enforcement Access to Chatbot User Data

investigators have used chatbot conversation histories as evidence in cases

In some cases, law enforcement has obtained chatbot data by accessing a suspect's device.

In other cases, it appears that law enforcement has sought chatbot data from AI companies.

Fourth Amendment protections may hinge on the limits of the third-party doctrine, which the Supreme Court ruled that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties."

The Carpenter Court (2018) held that the CSLI was not exempt from Fourth Amendment protection CSLI is not shared. A cell phone logs a cell-site record by dint of its operation.

courts have not yet had the occasion to determine whether a user maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy in chatbot histories

The Stored Communications Act (SCA) and Chatbot Data

Congress enacted the SCA as part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

SCA restricts when certain information may be disclosed by Electronic Communication Services or Remote Computing Services

Reverse Warrants for Chatbot Histories

Carpenter involved a law enforcement search for customer data pertaining to a known suspect.

law enforcement sometimes seeks customer data to identify an unknown suspect.

Reverse warrants seek to identify a suspect by compelling technology providers to identify user accounts that match the criteria specified in the warrant.

It appears that at least one reverse chatbot warrant may have already been obtained at the federal level. (What if Sherlock met Q?)

At the time of this writing, it does not appear that federal courts have issued any binding decisions on reverse chatbot warrants specifically.

In April 2026, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chatrie v. United States, on the constitutionality of geofence warrants.

Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Okello Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cellphone location information.

General warrants are those that leave too much discretion for executing officials to engage in "general, exploratory rummaging."

Law Enforcement Use of AI for Surveillance (e.g., Vehicle Information)

Anthropic sought to limit its AI products from being used for mass domestic surveillance by the government.

ALPR- Automatic License Plate Reader

One private ALPR company states that law enforcement customers can use AI-powered search tools to automatically look for images of "vehicles with unique characteristics," using search phrases like "white F-150 with a ladder in the back."

Thus far, federal courts have generally rejected Fourth Amendment challenges to law enforcement's use of ALPRs.

Some courts have cautioned, however, that technologically-advanced ALPR systems could still violate the Fourth Amendment moving forward.

A federal appellate court acknowledged that there could be Fourth Amendment concerns if camera surveillance were used "over longer periods or in combination with other tools—such as facial recognition,

Fourth Circuit concluded that "Carpenter prohibited the warrantless use of aerial surveillance to record an enormous swath of Baltimore over 12 hours daily."

Congressional Considerations

AI would join a long line of technological advancements like electronic eavesdropping, GPS tracking, thermal imaging, and wiretapping that have resulted in legal tension with constitutional privacy protections.

Some federal judges have suggested that Congress could enact new privacy legislation in light of the potential civil liberties implications of developing technologies.

Congress enacted the Privacy Protection Act, which "limits the ability of federal, state, and local officials to conduct certain searches and seizures implicating First Amendment activities."

Congress could leave resolution of any Fourth Amendment issues posed by AI to the courts.