In 1976, Frank Collin, an ambitious leader in the small but resilient Nazi party of the United States, planned a march in Skokie, Illinois--an attempt to raise the profile of his organization and build support for his cause. The town, many of whose residents were Jewish and had lived through the war, vehemently opposed the demonstration, and the case went to the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union came to the legal defense of Collin and his fellow Nazis on First Amendment grounds--a move that would be almost unthinkable today. Aryeh Neier, the national executive director of the ACLU at the time, received thousands of letters condemning his organization's decision to defend the free speech rights of Nazis. Neier was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1937 and fled from Germany to England along with his parents as a child.

Nonetheless, arguing that First Amendment coverage may extend to strong A.I. speakers raises a number of legitimate concerns. If A.I. is protected, why not protect speech by cats or by parts of nature, like waves? Well, for one thing, unlike a meow or a crashing sound, A.I. speech uses words and is therefore more likely to be understood as conveying a message. A.I. is also more likely to be central to some human communications effort, supplanting human communication. In other words, we often construct A.I. to serve an essentially communicative function.

In George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, "1984," every house is equipped with a Telescreen, a monitoring device enabling government surveillance. Amazon is trying to prevent its Echo/Alexa from turning into just that. Amazon is hoping to keep its Alexa devices from being a tool of government listening, which could inhibit people from buying them. Accordingly, the Seattle-based company has filed a motion to prevent recorded audio from an Echo being used as evidence in a criminal trial. Last year, police in Arkansas sought to obtain recordings captured by Echo as evidence in a 2015 murder case.