How it feels to battle with a flood of AI-generated complaints

An investigator writes that a human-written grievance at least gets to the heart of the issue immediately. Plus letters from Dexter Jandoo and Pete Bibby

Re your article (‘AI clog’: UK public bodies battle onslaught of chatbot-generated complaints, 8 November), I’m a complaint investigator for a housing association. I’ve worked here for nine years, and the scope of my job has completely changed within a few months. I am well-versed in policy and legislation, and I love my job, but it can be unbearable sifting through hundreds of pages of extremely wordy complaints.

You only need to look at the awful case of Awaab Ishak to know how important it is that a housing provider’s complaints process is accessible to tenants, but AI-generated complaints don’t help with this. Sending a complaint can be intimidating and time-consuming, and using AI can give someone confidence, but when we speak to customers in person or over the phone, and reference the same technical language that’s in their AI-generated complaint letter, they often don’t understand what we are saying.

It is much better to receive a human-written complaint (even with spelling mistakes and expletives), because at least it comes from the person, and gets to the heart of the issue. It means we can help you to the best of our ability, because you have told us exactly what you need. Additionally, AI enables our regular complainants.

“Frequent flyers” are part of any complaints role, but receiving multiple, massive, AI-generated complaints a month from someone makes us feel as if they don’t see us as people worthy of respect. Our organisation is considering classing this as a form of harassment, and it can’t come soon enough. Name and address supplied

I am wholly unsurprised at the AI clog phenomenon, though I view it through a different lens. Using AI as an assistant to seek support or remediation for crumbling public services should not be seen as a nuisance. It is the democratisation of recourse for wrongs that would normally be reserved for those with the time and resources to pursue them. Public bodies, especially councils, need to face their problems and start using AI assistance (with a human in the loop) to work through the likely legitimate complaints, regardless of how they are written. Dexter Jandoo Transformation consultant, London

The fact that AI has been used to write a complaint doesn’t necessarily invalidate it. It might be that AI enfranchises those who by reason of lack of education or inarticulacy have until now been unable to express a grievance. The “clog” might just be a metric of previous powerlessness. Pete Bibby Sheffield