More educators are getting complaints from parents that they suspect were written by AI. The problem, some educators say, is that AI-generated complaints can be very long, raising a litany of potential legal issues that then require more time—and even lawyers—to respond to.
How widespread is this problem? The EdWeek Research Center recently asked a nationally representative survey of teachers, principals, and district administrators that question.
Six percent of educators said they were certain a parent or student had used artificial intelligence to compose a complaint to or about them, and another 10% suspected that it had happened but couldn’t prove it.
While not eye-popping numbers, those percentages still add up to a sizable number of complaints and a good amount of time needed to respond to them.
The vast majority—three-quarters of survey respondents—said to their knowledge, parents and students had never used AI tools to compose a complaint to or about them. Ten percent of educators said they had received complaints but were certain they were not written with AI.
District and school leaders were more likely than teachers to report receiving AI-generated complaints. Nineteen percent of district leaders and 16% of school leaders said that “yes, definitely,” they had received an AI-drafted complaint. Another 19% of district leaders and 14% of school leaders said they suspected that parents or students had used AI to compose a complaint. Among teachers, 2% said they were certain they had received an AI-composed complaint and 8% suspected they had.
One in four educators reported that it took them more time to respond to a complaint they knew or suspected was composed with AI than it would to address a regular complaint. Part of the reason is that complaints written with AI can have a very legalistic tone and indiscriminately reference a litany of potential legal issues. This causes school and district staff (and their lawyers) to sink hours of time into responding to what might normally only take a few minutes, school and district leaders previously told Education Week. One superintendent estimated that complaints that once might have taken 15 minutes to review and respond to can now take three to four hours of staff time, not counting a lawyer’s time.
Even if an email has all the hallmarks of being AI-generated, legal and communication experts in education advise that teachers, and school and district leaders should respond to these complaints in the same way they would any other complaint.
Tips for identifying an AI-composed complaint
What clues tipped educators off that the complaints they received were written by AI? The EdWeek Research Center asked survey respondents to share their experiences.
Complaints that were overly long and detailed—or were filled with legal terms or long dashes—often raised educators’ suspicions.
“There are long hyphens in the text, and the language was too ornate,” said an Arizona high school teacher who works in a digital arts program.
A flag for some educators was when parents’ or students’ vocabulary, tone, or grammar in the complaint didn’t match up with their previous written messages.
An assistant superintendent from California who was certain one complaint was AI-generated and indicated that it took longer than usual to respond, wrote: “The language used was much more academic and the complaint was unnecessarily complex and lengthy.”
A couple of respondents reported that they had run complaints through AI-detection tools, and one educator said a parent admitted using ChatGPT to craft a complaint.
Other red flags are responses that come too quickly or those that don’t stay on topic.
“Responses that come faster than the response could have been composed without help,” wrote a district administrator from Virginia who works in technology.
And a special education district administrator from Washington state wrote: “The language in the complaint was uncharacteristically comprehensive and did not align with the parent’s concerns. Additionally, the language was more technical than would be expected from a layperson. We responded as we would with any complaint by investigating the situation and crafting a comprehensive response.”
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
