You don't have to be a person to be protected by the First Amendment. Corporations and labor unions have speech rights, for example.

But what about computers? Could the First Amendment cover artificial intelligence speech?

HAL no!, some might respond. But two law professors who've written a new paper exploring the subject urge readers to take the question, in their word, more "Siri-ously."

Toni M. Massaro of the University of Arizona and Helen Norton of the University of Colorado describe their paper, appearing in an upcoming issue of the Northwestern University Law Review, as a thought experiment. They write:

At some point, one might imagine, such computer speakers may be disconnected enough and smart enough to say that the speech they produce is theirs, not "ours," with no human creator or director in sight. This Essay considers the potential First Amendment consequences of such an evolution...whether computer speakers with strong AI might ever be treated as speakers protected by the First Amendment. We conclude that this is entirely plausible...[S]urprisingly little in contemporary First Amendment theory or doctrine blocks the path towards strong AI speakers' First Amendment protection.

The idea becomes less preposterous, according to the scholars, when one focuses not on who or what is doing the speaking, but on who is doing the listening.