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.
• Federal coalition work around the TAKE IT DOWN Act and against a proposed federal pre-emption of state AI laws.

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; the senior staff layer that has emerged publicly includes Adam Billen (co-executive director), Nathan Calvin (general counsel and VP of state affairs), and Seve Christian (California policy director). 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.