Generative AI makes drafting requests, complaints and appeals almost free, while their processing remains human. A study by three researchers, posted on arXiv on August 17, 2026, describes this imbalance, but no French institution yet measures the share of those submissions written by a language model, i.e., a program trained to generate text.
Requests that are rising, without French figures
Chris Schmitz (Hertie School), Lewis Hammond (Cooperative AI Foundation) and Alan Chan (GovAI) reviewed 2 288 public services in twelve countries, including France, and identified 84 presumed congestion cases. In 87 % of cases, it is individuals who submit a text produced by a model themselves, not autonomous agents. The authors do not demonstrate any causality, and they acknowledge this. For them, these requests are “not harmful per se”, but “administrations often cannot respond to them”. None of the ten detailed cases is French.
In France, several indicators are rising, without being broken down. Administrative courts recorded 334 706 cases in 2025, 20 % more than in 2024, according to the State Council’s public report. Its then vice‑president, Didier‑Roland Tabuteau, wrote that AI “risks further burdening its workload by facilitating the multiplication of requests”. The CADA received 45 % more referrals than its average over the previous four years, according to its activity report consulted by Acteurs publics. However, none of these documents distinguishes requests written with a model from others.
Administrations that close their counters
In Scotland, the Energy Consents Unit has stopped accepting objections by email since January 2026. In internal correspondence obtained by The Ferret, the administration cites a “significant increase in AI usage” in the observations received. Two individuals filed 120 AI‑generated appeals in two months, and the Information Commissioner secured, on June 8, the right to cap appeals at five. In the United Kingdom, the ObjectNow service claims to produce a detailed objection to a planning project in three minutes, according to the same media outlet.
In France, the code of relations between the public and the administration exempts “abusive requests, notably by their number or repetitive or systematic nature” from acknowledgment of receipt. An administration that has created an online service can also require that users go through it, and electronic filing assumes a “previously identified” user (article L. 112‑8). These tools, however, target a single request or requester. Hundreds of distinct requests, submitted by different users with the same tool, fall outside any of these frameworks, and no French legislation explicitly addresses this case.
Possible sorting, a human signature
Sorting of files remains regulated. According to the Constitutional Council, in its decision of 12 June 2018, an administration faced with an appeal against a decision made by algorithm must rule “without being able to rely exclusively on the algorithm”. On 20 October 2026, the Ministry of the Interior answered a written question that the tool being piloted for residence permits makes no decisions. The project assigned to Mistral on mass litigation, according to the source, follows the same preparatory logic.
Grounded appeals, however, remain owed regardless of their number. So far, their drafting cost has deterred some, without anyone having decided it. The State Council, the CADA and the CNIL have not yet measured the share of requests written by a model.
