Complaints About AI Scams
Case reference FOI2026/02157
Received 8 September 2026
Published 6 October 2026
Request
Please provide the following for the periods 1 January–31 December 2023, 2024, 2025 and 1 January–31 August 2026:
1. The number of complaints, enquiries or referrals received by your authority, including referrals received through the Citizens Advice Consumer Service, where AI-generated or synthetic content was recorded as being relevant to the complaint.
2. Of these, where recorded, the number relating specifically to online advertising, social media advertising, online retailers or e-commerce websites.
3. Where recorded, please provide a breakdown of complaints involving:
* AI-generated images of shops, business premises or locations;
* AI-generated product images;
* AI-generated images or videos of customers, models or testimonials;
* AI-generated or deepfake celebrity/public figure endorsements;
* AI-generated text used to market or describe products/services;
* other AI-generated or synthetic advertising content.
4. Where recorded, the total monetary value of losses reported in connection with these complaints, enquiries or referrals, broken down by year.
Response
Please provide the following for the periods 1 January–31 December 2023, 2024, 2025 and 1 January–31 August 2026:
1. The number of complaints, enquiries or referrals received by your authority, including referrals received through the Citizens Advice Consumer Service, where AI-generated or synthetic content was recorded as being relevant to the complaint.
2. Of these, where recorded, the number relating specifically to online advertising, social media advertising, online retailers or e-commerce websites.
3. Where recorded, please provide a breakdown of complaints involving:
AI-generated images of shops, business premises or locations;
AI-generated product images;
AI-generated images or videos of customers, models or testimonials;
AI-generated or deepfake celebrity/public figure endorsements;
AI-generated text used to market or describe products/services;
other AI-generated or synthetic advertising content.
4. Where recorded, the total monetary value of losses reported in connection with these complaints, enquiries or referrals, broken down by year.
Answer: This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 7,164 complaints would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 597 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.