Of Burdens and Bots: How Benefit Claimants Use Generative AI Chatbots

We know an increasing amount about the use of AI tools by officials working across the design and delivery of the welfare state, but far less is understood about how those accessing support are making use of this technology themselves. This article presents an analysis of 271 chats that current recipients of Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment in the UK held with commercial chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. It is widely recognised that maintaining a claim for social security support imposes a range of administrative burdens on claimants, and our ‘chat mining’ data show that claimants use AI tools in a way that both reflects and reduces the learning, compliance and psychological costs of these burdens. The article argues that claimant use of these tools is likely to have significant and unpredictable implications for social security administration.