Often, yes, and Washington agencies are already releasing them. Under the Public Records Act, a public record is any writing about the conduct of government that an agency prepares, owns, uses or retains, in any form. A prompt a city or county employee types into an AI tool for agency work, and the reply, fit those words. In 2025, reporters asked nearly a dozen Washington cities for their staff’s ChatGPT logs, and cities handed over thousands of pages.
What does the Act count as a public record?
RCW 42.56.010 defines a public record as “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or proprietary function prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.” A writing includes “every other means of recording any form of communication or representation.”
Nothing there turns on the tool. The question for an AI chat is the one the Act asks of an email: is it about agency business, and did the agency prepare, own, use or retain it?
Does a personal account or phone change the answer?
Not by itself. In Nissen v. Pierce County (August 27, 2015), the Washington Supreme Court held “that text messages sent and received by a public employee in the employee’s official capacity are public records of the employer, even if the employee uses a private cell phone.” The court also set out how agencies reach those records: employees search “their files, devices, and accounts” and produce “any public records (e-mails, text messages, and any other type of data).” An employee who withholds something as personal “must submit an affidavit with facts sufficient to show the information is not a ‘public record.’”
The ruling was about texts, but its words cover any type of data in an employee’s accounts. An AI chat about agency work in a personal account is the obvious next case for it.
Has this already happened?
Yes. In August 2025, Cascade PBS and KNKX reported that they had filed “public records requests seeking two years’ worth of ChatGPT logs from nearly a dozen Washington cities,” and that “Cascade PBS and KNKX obtained thousands of pages of ChatGPT conversation logs from city officials.” Bellingham and Everett responded fastest and most fully. Some chats were redacted, for example where they held details of an active police investigation.
So the first request has already come. The open question for each agency is how fast and how completely it can answer the next one.
How long do AI records have to be kept?
Washington State Archives answered that in June 2024, in How Long Do Generative AI Records Need to Be Kept?: “The retention period for public records depends on the content and function of the record, not its format.” A chat used as a sounding board can fall under the transitory brainstorming series; one used to develop an ordinance or a strategic plan falls under the development series for that work. And the Archives warns against the easy answer: “Retaining everything is a strategy for chaos.”
What a Washington agency should have in place
- Decide where AI work happens. Name the AI tools staff may use for agency work, and say whether personal accounts are allowed.
- Keep the record where the agency can search it. If chats live only in employees’ own accounts, every request becomes a Nissen search, one employee and one affidavit at a time.
- Apply the retention schedule you already have. Classify AI records by content and function, as the Archives advises.
- Write AI into the records request process before the next request names ChatGPT.
For the California version of this question, see Are AI prompts public records in California?. For what to ask of the record itself, see What to require of an agency AI usage record.
Where Verillian fits
Verillian keeps the record of every captured AI interaction on your agency’s own servers, so a records request is a search your staff run. Verillian never receives your prompts, responses or records.
Sources read on 27 October 2026.
