Civil service forced to go back to face-to-face job assessments after mandarins discovered they interviewed AI bots instead of humans

Published: 14:16 EST, 13 November 2026 | Updated: 14:30 EST, 13 November 2026 The civil service is being forced to return to face-to-face job assessments after mandarins discovered they had interviewed AI bots instead of human applicants.Whitehall bosses are also planning to move away from the traditional personal statement after a surge in applications created by AI platforms such as ChatGPT reduced their value.Job seekers are using AI to fire off hundreds of applications for different civil service roles with minimal effort – meaning genuine applicants can sometimes be lost in the quagmire.In the most extreme cases, some applications – and even virtual interviews carried out over Zoom or Microsoft Teams – appear to have been entirely generated by AI bots rather than human applicants.There is at least one case in which civil servants became so suspicious during a virtual interview that the candidate was not a real person that they terminated the video call early.As a result of the deluge of AI applications, the civil service is now looking at re-introducing a requirement for face-to-face interviews in its flagship recruitment schemes, one official said. Currently, final-stage interviews take place face-to-face or via video.The head of the civil service wants to avoid the situation where people are using AI to generate bland cover letters, so Whitehall is also going to move away from personal statements, they added.Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo acknowledged criticisms of Whitehall being ‘tame and risk averse’ in her annual lecture this week and said the civil service is ‘no longer unequivocally considered to be the best in the world’. Cabinet Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo acknowledged that Whitehall is in need of reform in her annual lecture but insisted that ‘civil servants do some of the hardest jobs in the country’While admitting that Whitehall is in need of reform, the Cabinet Secretary insisted that ‘civil servants do some of the hardest jobs in the country’.Dame Antonia said: ‘I have heard and have listened to the criticisms of the service. They are no less important for being well rehearsed: tame and risk averse, reactive, not strategic [and] siloed, not working across boundaries.’As well as simplifying recruitment to ‘bring an end to formulaic job ads, generic interviews and slow processes’, Dame Antonia also said she will take ‘decisive action’ against poorly performing officials.She said: ‘Poor performance drives out good performance and discretionary effort, and we must urgently address that.‘We will strengthen processes and train and equip managers to reward those making the biggest impact, and take decisive action on poor performance.’It comes after a civil servant who exploited the Whitehall work-from-home culture to earn more than £280,000 of taxpayers' cash by working multiple jobs was convicted of nine counts of fraud.Kashim Chowdhury juggled up to five civil service jobs at one time. He took sick days and holidays in an attempt to manage his workload and keep the ruse going, even allegedly applying make-up to appear ill on a video call with bosses.And Chowdhury wasn’t alone – with official figures showing hundreds of public sector workers have been caught secretly taking salaries from multiple civil service jobs.The Cabinet Office's National Fraud Initiative has identified at least 301 public sector employees engaging in so-called 'polygamous working' since 2016.The civil service workforce has continued to expand in recent years. Last year, it had more than 442,000 full-time employees on the payroll, compared with 316,790 in 2016 and 382,945 in 2021.