AI tools are making it easier for people to complete forms, prepare complaints and submit claims, while some public services are seeing sharp increases in demand. Researcher Chris Schmitz calls the phenomenon “agentic flooding,” where AI reduces the effort required to interact with government systems.
In the U.K., complaints to the housing ombudsman rose from about 2,600 in 2022 to more than 7,000 last year. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recorded roughly five times as many complaints over the same period, while Brazilian courts and the German parliament have also seen increases in public submissions.
Research Tracks 84 Cases Across 11 Jurisdictions
Schmitz and his co-authors examined 84 potential cases across 11 jurisdictions in their research paper, which is scheduled to be presented at the AI Ethics and Society conference next month. Their public dataset covers services including welfare applications, judicial appeals and other government processes that can be accessed online.
The researchers stop short of saying AI directly caused the increases. However, many cases followed a similar pattern, with submissions remaining relatively stable before 2022 and then rising as generative AI tools became more widely available.
Schmitz said newer AI systems have reduced the work required from applicants. Tasks that previously required gathering documents and carefully prompting an earlier chatbot can now involve taking a photo of a letter and asking an AI assistant to prepare a response.
The increases have some similarities to the flood of AI-generated bug bounty reports that security teams began receiving. Organizations still had to review those submissions even when many contained little useful information, increasing the workload for teams with limited resources.
Many Applications Come From Eligible People
Schmitz said government services face a different issue because most of the filings his research examined were submitted by people who were entitled to make the claims. AI may simply be helping them complete processes that previously required too much time or effort.
Policy researchers describe those costs as administrative burden, covering the time, knowledge and effort people need to access government programs. Complicated procedures can prevent eligible people from completing applications even when they qualify for a service or benefit.
That creates a challenge for governments because measures that reduce submission volumes can also make legitimate services harder to access. Schmitz argues that governments may instead need to reconsider how these processes operate when AI-assisted applications become common.
For applicants, he said, AI can already make tasks such as preparing tax returns or responding to official correspondence easier. His research examines how public agencies may need to adapt when the cost of preparing and submitting requests continues to fall.
Featured image credits: Magnific.com
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