The public are flooding their local services with AI slop complaints
Prompting a public sector crisis.
Docs, forms, texts and images in the artificial pipeline. Image by Cybernews.
- AI tools are helping people write longer complaints to public bodies, creating a surge called agentic flooding.
- UK housing complaints rose from 2,600 in 2022 to 7,000 last year.
- Similar complaint surges have appeared in the United States, Germany, Brazil, France, and Singapore.
- Researchers say AI can help citizens claim rights, but it can also overload public services.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Artificial intelligence is overwhelming public services with a massive surge in citizen complaints, a global crisis that researchers are calling "agentic flooding."
I’ve personally noticed that a variety of services in the UK sometimes take weeks to reply to emails these days. Everything from health services to academic institutions to the tax office has slowed down.
And while it could be a bit of a scapegoat to say it’s because of AI (and not be able to explain why), a new report has described it as “agentic flooding.”
“Agentic flooding” is what researcher Chris Schmitz calls the massive swell in AI-generated correspondence sent to public service institutions, sinking them in huge contact-back quagmires.
Take housing in the UK, for example. Complaints to the ombudsman have rocketed from 2,600 in 2022 to 7,000 last year.
And, as the BBC reported recently, citizens are keener to reach for their chatbot than to pick up the phone, as complaints about trash collection can run to over 20 pages, meaning a colossal amount of content for staff to wade through.
Not just a British thing
The research is more far-reaching than Britain, however, as the United States’ Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has seen a deluge of complaints increase fivefold in the same timeframe.
And as a global trend, both Germany and Brazil have experienced similar surges in judicial and parliamentary petitions, respectively.
And while the researcher stops short of placing the blame directly on AI, 11 countries, including France and Singapore, generally show flat complaint levels up to 2022 (the onset of AI deployment), followed by a huge uptick.
AI has also had a huge impact on bug bounties, which involve finding software security vulnerabilities, including lots of hallucinations and slop. This proves yet another example of how one hand AI can make the utility of spotting problems easier, and on the other, it gives the headache of siphoning out all the fake instances of glitches.
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Erasing the administrative burden
The problem is that complainants see bureaucratic institutional sites as being labyrinthine. Determining which jurisdiction to complain to, or even manually searching for the right contact person, and speaking to unknowledgeable receptionists, are all part of the struggle.
Using AI reduces user friction. They don’t have to wait on hold for an hour or speak out negatively about dissatisfaction.
Before it might have been a question of a lot of dragging context together and prompting ChatGPT 3.5 very precisely, it may now be a question of just pasting or taking a photo of a letter with your Claude app and getting a pretty good response in one shot,AI researcher Chris Schmitz told TechCrunch.
He also pointed out that a sizable majority of cases involve people realizing they can claim welfare benefits or financial refunds from institutions like banks.
AI can therefore help tell someone what they’re entitled to, and generate a potentially massive explanation. But what’s seen as a win for citizens can be a major operational bottleneck for institutions.
However, Schmitz sees this as an opportunity to rebuild the public sector, as paper-based digital forms will soon be a thing of the past. AI agents will likely become a key factor in communication between institutions and citizens.
