Edinburgh councillors raise the alarm on an influx of AI-generated complaints inundating public bodies
Alarm raised on AI-generated complaints
Edinburgh councillors have raised the alarm on an influx of AI-generated complaints inundating public bodies.
Councillor Jo Mowat (Con) brought the matter before Full Council where she cited concerns over lengthy complaints with false information and “hallucinated cases”.
This comes after an Information Commissioner report warned public bodies of a growing number of AI-generated Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. It cited a surge of complex FOIs which “misinterpret” legislation. Officials claimed the problem is “changing the day-to-day reality” of staff’s work.
Cllr Mowat addressed councillors on Thursday: “We are not the only public sector seeing AI-generated complaints. You’ve probably seen them in your inbox.
“They tend to be exceedingly lengthy and they are also complex. Many are seeing invented cases. They take an enormous amount of officer time to respond to.”
The complaints can run into the thousands of words and contain detailed references to legal cases which require fact checking, said her motion.
Currently the council cannot triage whether a complaint was written by AI, according to the City Centre councillor, and she called it “an area of strategic importance”.
Cllr Mowat called for scrutiny into the scale of the problem facing the council, including the number of suspected AI-generated complaints received compared to non-AI-generated complaints.
She also asked whether the problem is being felt across the entire local government sector, and whether any viable responses had been identified.
Supporting the motion, the Liberal Democrats called for investigation into whether the council is receiving AI-generated FOIs. They questioned whether AI tools could be used to triage “burdensome” or “vexatious” requests.
Cllr Alan Beal (Lib Dem) said: “The report was about FOI requests as well as complaints. We need to explore AI tools that deal with this volume of complaints. It could become completely unmanageable.”
Cllr Mowat accepted the Liberal Democrat’s addendum and the motion was passed without opposition.