AI legislation
Tracking, analyzing, and engaging Texas bills that define, govern, or restrict artificial intelligence systems.
Texas Government Affairs Specialty
Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Technology Policy in Texas
Texas is moving from studying artificial intelligence to building governance frameworks around its deployment. Em Dash Strategies provides Texas lobbying and government affairs representation for companies and organizations that need to engage that shift with both technical literacy and legislative process.
Work
How Em Dash Helps
Responsible AI frameworks
Helping clients understand Texas approaches to ethics, transparency, risk, and public-sector standards.
State agency AI policy
Work involving how agencies inventory, procure, and oversee AI tools, including DIR-related modernization.
Stakeholder coalitions
Identifying who must be at the table — developers, deployers, agencies, and affected industries — and keeping them coordinated.
Legislative strategy
Committee preparation, amendments, Senate coordination, and the practical sequence of moving a technically dense bill.
Executive branch engagement
Connecting legislative work to the Governor’s Office, agencies, and implementation after a bill is filed or passed.
Institutional background
Experience that informs the work
Katy Aldredge has unusually direct institutional AI experience for a Texas government affairs practice: she staffed both the House select committee created to study the issue and the state advisory council charged with watching how agencies actually use these systems.
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Committee Clerk
House Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Technologies
April 2024 – December 2024
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Clerk
Texas Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council
February 2024 – December 2024
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Committee Director
House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency
February 2025 – August 2026
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Chief of Staff / Capitol Director
Representative Giovanni Capriglione
November 2014 – August 2026
Record
Selected legislative & policy experience
As senior staff, Katy helped develop and advance these measures. She was not the elected author or sponsor.
Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council
Established the council to study and monitor state-agency use of AI, examine ethics and administrative-policy questions, and inventory agency AI systems. Katy later served as clerk to that body.
Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act
The state’s AI governance framework. Her legislative work included the staff process of turning a technically complex governance concept into legislation that could move.
AI and code transformation at DIR
Created an AI or code-transformation function within the Department of Information Resources involving generative AI and modernization of state technology and code.
AI literacy for state employees
Training requirements that treat AI as a workforce and public-administration issue, not only a product-regulation issue.
Public-sector AI governance
State and local government AI definitions, standards, and oversight — the operational layer that sits beside broader governance statutes.
AI-enabled financial exploitation
Addresses synthetic-media scams and related harms, connecting AI policy to consumer protection and financial crime.
Texas Quantum Initiative
Adjacent emerging-technology policy: building a quantum-computing ecosystem rather than treating AI as an isolated statute.
Earlier SB 64-related work also encouraged government entities to consider emerging technologies including AI, blockchain, and cryptocurrency — an older statutory thread that later AI and digital-asset debates still sit on.
Landscape
Navigating AI policy in Texas
Texas did not begin with a single comprehensive AI code. It began with questions agencies were already answering in practice: which systems they were using, what risks those systems created, and who inside government was accountable. That is why the advisory-council model mattered. It produced an inventory and a set of administrative questions before the Legislature wrote a governance framework.
A sophisticated government-affairs strategy in this area usually has to do several things at once. It has to read definitions carefully — “artificial intelligence system” is not a casual phrase in a bill. It has to know whether a proposal is aimed at private developers, at government procurement, at workforce training, or at a specific harm such as synthetic-media fraud. It has to anticipate committee jurisdiction, fiscal notes, and agency implementation. And it has to explain the technology in language that legislators and staff can use without oversimplifying the product.
Companies often arrive with a national or federal frame. Texas will still ask Texas questions: How would this work at DIR? What does it do to an agency’s existing cybersecurity plan? Does it change a procurement? Does it require a rider? The firms that fare best are the ones that can answer those questions before the hearing notice goes out.
Organizations
Who we help
These are the kinds of organizations for whom Texas AI government affairs is often relevant. Listing a category does not mean any particular company is a client.
AI developers
Model builders and applied-AI companies whose products may be defined, constrained, or procured under Texas law.
Enterprise and cloud platforms
Companies whose customers inside Texas government or regulated industries are asking what the new statutes require.
Startups and data companies
Smaller firms that cannot staff a full Austin office but still need the legislative calendar read accurately.
Trade associations
Groups coordinating members who will be affected differently by the same AI bill.
Regulated deployers
Companies putting AI into insurance, finance, health, or other environments that already have Texas rules.
Government vendors
Firms selling AI solutions to agencies and needing both procurement literacy and statutory awareness.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Who handles artificial intelligence lobbying in Texas?
Em Dash Strategies is an Austin-based Texas lobbying and government affairs firm led by Katy Aldredge. AI is one of the firm’s core specialties because Katy’s Capitol work included the House Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Technologies, the Texas Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, and later staff work on AI governance, agency use of AI, and related emerging-technology legislation. The firm helps technology companies, associations, and organizations that sell to or are regulated by Texas government understand bills, agencies, and the legislative calendar.
What experience does Katy Aldredge have with Texas AI policy?
Katy served as Committee Clerk of the House Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Technologies and as Clerk of the Texas Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council. She later served as Committee Director of the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency and as Chief of Staff to Representative Giovanni Capriglione. While serving in those senior staff roles, her legislative work included the Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council statute, the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, state-employee AI literacy, public-sector AI standards, and adjacent emerging-technology initiatives such as the Texas Quantum Initiative.
How is AI policy developed in the Texas Legislature?
Texas has used a mix of study, inventory, and then statutory frameworks. The 88th Legislature created an advisory council to examine how state agencies use AI. The 89th Legislature then took up governance, agency standards, workforce literacy, code transformation inside the Department of Information Resources, and harms such as AI-enabled financial exploitation. Bills typically move through policy committees, may intersect with appropriations, and often require coordination with DIR, other agencies, and the executive branch before anything is operational.
Can Em Dash help a technology company engage on Texas AI legislation?
Yes. The firm’s government affairs work includes legislative strategy, bill analysis, stakeholder identification, coalition building, committee preparation, and engagement with House and Senate offices and the executive branch. For an AI or emerging-technology company, that often means explaining how a product actually works, identifying which Texas bills would affect deployment or procurement, and helping decision-makers distinguish operational issues from political ones.
Does Em Dash work on public-sector AI and state-agency issues?
Public-sector AI is a substantial part of the Texas debate. Katy’s staff work included agency AI inventories, ethics and administrative-policy questions, AI literacy for state employees, and a DIR function involving generative AI and modernization of state technology. Companies that sell AI tools to government, or that are affected by how agencies use automated systems, often need government affairs help that understands both procurement realities and the statutes that now sit around them.
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