The rise of AI appeals: University grades to legal claims and Parliament

University students are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to challenge their grades, with academics noticing AI-assisted appeals landing in their inboxes – but the trend stretches well beyond lecture theatres.

University of Auckland assistant dean Professor Audrea Warner said the use of AI in student appeals had become increasingly noticeable.

"When we look at appeals, we look to see how they're written, what are the things that students are addressing that they want to have relooked at in terms of a mark," she told 1News.

Warner believes many students are uploading their assignment, the marking rubric, and lecturer feedback into AI tools before asking them to draft an appeal.

"I think they've put in some kind of prompt or said, 'Here is my rubric, here is my assignment... what are the areas that I don't feel these particular grade points are fair or I disagree?'"

While the technology can quickly produce polished responses, Warner said there were often common characteristics.

"It starts talking about just the assessment in general and kind of has a very long paragraph about that, whereas we've asked students to be quite succinct."

Despite the growing use of AI, every appeal still requires a human assessment.

Warner said that could increase workloads if more students were encouraged to challenge their marks, but she also saw benefits.

She said AI could help students who struggle to express themselves – particularly neurodiverse students – communicate concerns they might otherwise never raise.

"I'd write it myself and then I'd have AI check it so I can make it more professional," one University of Auckland student said.

Another questioned whether students should be criticised for using AI if educators were already using the technology themselves.

"If they're going to use it to grade, I don't know why we couldn't use it in the same way to ask for a better grade."

The New Zealand Law Society says universities are only one example of a much broader shift.

Spokesperson and Wilson Harle partner Felicity Monteiro said the legal profession was becoming a "microcosm" of how AI was being adopted across society.

She said lawyers were already seeing AI used to draft court submissions, prepare communications and carry out legal research, while clients were increasingly arriving with AI-generated legal claims.

"It does seem like a really, really helpful tool for people who can't afford lawyers to produce a vast amount of written material that on the surface looks good," Monteiro said.

She said AI had the potential to improve access to justice for people who otherwise could not afford legal representation, but warned it also risked generating large numbers of claims without merit.

"I think what we'll see is a whole swathe of claims that don't have merit but are able to be put into a nice, packaged format... that we otherwise might not have seen."

Her advice was to use AI cautiously.

"It can generate the words but not the material that you're relying on."

Monteiro also warned that many free AI models could retain information entered into them, meaning users should think carefully before uploading confidential or commercially sensitive documents.

In a written statement, the Law Society said New Zealand law reserves certain legal services – including representing people in most courts and providing legal advice in those proceedings – to qualified professionals.

It said the rapid growth of AI raised new questions about where a writing assistant stopped helping someone prepare documents and started providing legal advice in areas reserved for lawyers.

Despite those concerns, Monteiro believes the technology is here to stay.

"I think we can't help it... there is a tidal wave coming of people using it."

Auckland City Council has also noticed an increase in the use of AI tools in customer inquiry, complaint and official information requests.

Customer resolutions manager Sally Woods said the council had "certainly seen an uptick in the number of customers using AI tools when communicating with us".

She said people would sometimes disclose their use of AI in writing their query or request but that wasn't always the case.

Parliament is also adapting.

Clerk of the House David Wilson said there was nothing wrong with people using AI to help refine their submissions to Parliament, provided the views remained their own.

"I guess what Parliament is interested in is having people's own original thoughts," Wilson said.

"Although I think AI could perhaps help refine how people express those, I'd hope that that's what it was doing rather than giving its thoughts."

Parliament is now preparing to trial AI to help process public submissions, not by making decisions, but by helping staff identify issues that require human attention.

"What we're going to trial is whether AI could do that first scan through those submissions as they come in to check for things to alert a human decision-maker to," Wilson said.

"So not to make decisions but to use its speed and processing power."

The need for that became particularly apparent during the Treaty Principles Bill process, which attracted more than 300,000 submissions.

Wilson said a team of 10 staff spent months reading submissions and still had not finished before the committee reported the bill back to Parliament.

"I think there are some really potentially good uses for it in speeding that up."