AI agents are flooding public services with new requests
Article image or reusable cover for TechCrunch AI
AI tools make it much easier for people to fill out forms and submit complaints to government agencies, leading to dramatic increases in incoming cases worldwide.
In the United Kingdom, complaints to the housing ombudsman more than doubled from 2,600 in 2022 to just over 7,000 the year before, and the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau saw a fivefold increase over the same period. Brazilian court petitions and German parliamentary petitions showed similar jumps. Researcher Chris Schmitz studies this trend as "agentic flooding" and examined 84 cases across 11 jurisdictions, finding that most new applications come from people with genuine entitlements who previously didn't apply due to bureaucratic burden.
The vast majority of cases we find are people who are entitled to claim for something, claiming for that thing
Vibekollen prepared this summary with AI from the original publication. The content belongs to TechCrunch AI.
More from TechCrunch AI
Apple CEO says the company doesn’t ‘want to ship AI for AI’s sake’
TechCrunch AI 10 h ago
4 days left: How TechCrunch Founder Summit helps you make more useful connections to scale
TechCrunch AI 10 h ago
Judge allows NAACP lawsuit over xAI data center pollution to move forward
TechCrunch AI 10 h ago
OpenAI reportedly lowers funding target for new round
TechCrunch AI 15 h ago