Encode Justice

Encode Justice (now operating publicly as Encode / Encode AI) is a youth-led, international advocacy organization pushing for AI to be developed and deployed in ways aligned with human values. The organization was founded in July 2020 by Sneha Revanur, then a 15-year-old high school student in San José, California, as a single-issue campaign against California's Proposition 25, a ballot measure that would have replaced cash bail with a risk-assessment algorithm. After Prop 25 failed, the campaign re-formed as a standing organization with a broader remit.

By 2026 the organization describes itself as a network of more than 1,000 high school and college students across 40+ U.S. states and roughly 30 countries, organized into local chapters. Three U.S. state chapters — North Carolina, Oregon, and Georgia — have joined the Electronic Frontier Alliance. Chapters run educational workshops, draft policy memos, lobby state and city officials, and build local coalitions; the national organization handles federal advocacy, legal interventions, and coordination across the chapter network.

Programs and recent work

Encode's most prominent campaign to date was its co-sponsorship of California SB 1047, the 2024 frontier-AI safety bill authored by State Senator Scott Wiener. The organization helped assemble a broad coalition — including AI researchers, civil-society groups, and a letter signed by roughly 120 entertainment-industry figures such as Mark Ruffalo and Shonda Rhimes — calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to sign the bill. Newsom vetoed it in September 2024.

Other publicly attributable work includes:

• Leading a coalition that secured the first U.S. federal restrictions on the integration of AI into nuclear weapons command-and-control, included in the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act.
• A 2024 Capitol Hill Summit on AI-enabled child sexual exploitation, paired with a model school-board policy and what the organization describes as the first national deepfake incident tracker.
• The AI 2030 platform: a youth-authored set of policy recommendations for global AI governance, structured around what the organization wants in place by the end of the decade.
• An amicus brief filed in Musk v. Altman (January 2025), opposing OpenAI's proposed conversion from a nonprofit-controlled structure to a more conventional for-profit one.
• Co-advocacy for the TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed by President Trump in May 2025, which criminalizes non-consensual intimate imagery including AI-generated deepfakes and requires platforms to remove flagged content within 48 hours.
• Defeating a proposed ten-year federal moratorium that would have preempted all state-level AI regulation — the key policy win enabling the state legislative victories below.

State legislative victories since 2025 mark Encode's most significant policy outcomes to date. The organization formally co-sponsored California SB 53 (the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act), signed by Governor Newsom in September 2025 — the first enforceable U.S. regulatory framework for frontier AI, requiring large developers to publish safety frameworks, report critical safety incidents, and protect employee whistleblowers. Encode advocated for the New York RAISE Act, signed December 2025 (and amended March 2026), imposing safety-protocol maintenance and 72-hour incident-reporting requirements on frontier AI developers. Most recently, the organization supported Illinois SB 315, signed by Governor Pritzker in July 2026 — described by Encode as the country's strongest AI safety law, adding a requirement for annual independent third-party audits of large AI developers.

The organization also runs a public-awareness wing that publishes explainers, op-eds, and a podcast, and conducts in-classroom workshops at high schools and colleges.

Structure

Encode is a U.S.-based nonprofit with a small paid staff and a much larger volunteer base of student organizers operating through chapters. Sneha Revanur remains president. By 2026 the senior staff includes Sunny Gandhi (co-executive director), Adam Billen (vice president of public policy), Nathan Calvin (general counsel and VP of state affairs), and Seve Christian (California policy director). Gandhi was named to the TIME100 AI list in 2026 for his contributions to state AI policy advocacy. The organization has rebranded its public-facing identity from "Encode Justice" to "Encode" / "Encode AI"; the original encodejustice.org domain remains in use for chapter and program content.

Comparisons to youth-led climate and gun-control movements — Sunrise, March for Our Lives — appear frequently in coverage of the organization and reflect the model it has self-consciously borrowed: a generation framing AI as their issue, with the legitimacy of being the cohort most affected by long-run outcomes.