AI floods UK public sector with lengthy complaints and information requests
Local authorities, courts and schools report AI‑generated documents — some run to 200 pages; regulator says bodies must still process them.
Artificial intelligence has created an unexpected administrative burden for public bodies across the United Kingdom as a sharp rise in AI‑assisted complaints, information requests and legal representations lands on already stretched staff.
Volume and length jump, quality varies
Local authorities, courts, schools and MPs' offices report that citizens can now produce lengthy formal documents in minutes using chatbots, forcing officials to spend hours checking and processing submissions. Where complaints once averaged around two pages, many are now running to 20 pages, and one submission reached 200 pages.
Officials also warn that a portion of these AI‑generated filings contain incorrect legal interpretations, fabricated details or citations to laws from other countries, which complicates the task of assessing and responding to them.
The UK's information regulator has reminded public bodies that they remain obliged to consider information requests and related filings even when there are reasonable grounds to suspect they were produced by artificial intelligence.
The scale is already measurable: London’s transport operator recorded a record 4,769 requests for access to information in the 2025/2026 financial year. At the same time, newly opened individual cases at employment tribunals increased by 28 percent year‑on‑year in the April–June period.
Some institutions are exploring short‑term measures to handle the surge, including imposing limits on the length of submissions and deploying AI tools to perform initial triage and redaction before human review.
Photo: press material from the event
