‘Chucking their stuff into ChatGPT and hitting send’: AI slop in the administrative state

Most research on artificial intelligence (AI) in the administrative state focuses on its use by officials. This article addresses a comparatively neglected issue: the impact of the use of AI tools by the public themselves. Drawing on a qualitative survey with over 500 civil servants in the United Kingdom, it argues that AI use by the public is increasingly disrupting the front line of the administrative state. The argument is set out in three parts. First, as the administrative state increasingly relies on text‐based inputs, officials use correspondence as a proxy for individuals – a longstanding assumption of ‘autographic’ authorship that the diffusion of generative AI tools unsettles. Second, the problem can be characterized as ‘AI slop’: AI‐generated correspondence with high volume and velocity that adopts a particular voice in interactions with officials. Third, this AI slop causes three forms of disruption: to the signals that officials draw from correspondence, to trust between officials and the public, and to systems that are ill‐equipped to deal with it. The article concludes by arguing that the status quo itself fails to adequately meet the needs of many people accessing services, and that systems need to be redesigned not only for a society beset by AI slop, but also in ways that address the drivers of it.