AI-generated submissions overwhelm Riga City Council amid new response deadline
After a new law shortened the deadline for authorities to respond to citizen submissions to 10 working days, Riga's city government says it is being flooded with AI-generated applications. Legal experts note existing tools already allow handling abusive filings.
Amendments to Latvia's Law on Submissions, in force since March 1, 2026, require public authorities to respond substantively to citizens' submissions within ten working days instead of the previous one month. This tighter deadline has intensified a problem already facing Riga City Council: its City Development Department has been swamped with submissions that appear to have been prepared using artificial intelligence tools.
Edgars Bergholcs, head of the council's City Development Committee, says the department is facing critical overload precisely as it undergoes reorganization. One example cited: a single person filed over 100 submissions in about a year concerning properties in the Ķengarags district, while also regularly contacting other municipal institutions. Bergholcs proposes legal changes allowing the municipality to reply to AI-generated letters using AI tools itself, to leave clearly disproportionate and repetitive requests without further action, and to cap submission length — potentially via the Latvija.gov.lv portal, converting free-form applications into structured e-services.
Existing rules already offer solutions
Matīss Malojlo, a legal adviser at the Ombudsman's Office, explains that using AI to draft a submission is not by itself grounds to refuse processing it — what matters is the content, not the tool used to produce it. However, the Law on Submissions already permits authorities to leave unprocessed submissions that show abuse of the right to petition, such as excessive frequency or repeated filings with only minor changes. For multiple submissions of essentially identical content, an authority may issue one combined, even publicly posted, response.
Proposed solutions
The Consumer Rights Protection Centre (PTAC) is developing a self-service client portal that would digitize and structure the submission process, requiring only legally relevant facts rather than free-form, often artificially lengthy text. Nikolajs Ozoliņš, a lecturer at Turība Business School, stresses that public administration must balance reasonable processing time against citizens' right to a response, including by publishing anonymized standard answers online.
