AI Bots Flooded 2023 UK Consultation on Disposable Vapes Ban, Researchers Find

Automated bots submitted tens of thousands of fake responses to a UK government consultation in an unsuccessful bid to block a ban on disposable vapes, according to new research.

The study, published this week in the journal Tobacco Control, examined the 2023 consultation on the tobacco and vapes bill. Its authors are Dr Nason Maani of the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath. They say machine-generated entries accounted for three-quarters of everything the government received, and believe it is the first coordinated attempt to use AI to derail health policymaking in the UK.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) used bot-detection methods to analyse the submissions. Of the 118,756 responses it received, 90,835, or 76%, were identified as coming from bots. All but two of them answered the same question in the "smoke free generation" consultation, opposing the plan by Rishi Sunak's Conservative government to ban disposable vapes.

The department said the submissions were "often duplicated many times and sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses". The researchers described the episode as "the first documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation".

The DHSC removed all 90,835 automated responses from its decision-making. Keir Starmer's Labour government inherited the tobacco and vapes bill in 2024 and passed it into law, including the ban on businesses selling or supplying disposable vapes.

Maani warned that detection may become harder over time. "The threat is that future campaigns become harder to catch, and what we can't catch, we don't know about," he said. "Such campaigns are a threat because they raise the possibility of a handful of powerful interests looking like a mass movement."

Caroline Cerny, deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, called the evidence "deeply concerning". She pointed to the tobacco industry's history of seeking to undermine public health regulation and urged vigilance against the use of technology to serve commercial interests. "Decisions that affect public health must be based on sound evidence and expertise, not manipulated response numbers," she said.

Azzurra Moores, associate director for information ecosystems at the thinktank Demos, described the findings as "pretty alarming". She said consultations are one of the main ways government opens up its decision-making, and that a swamped consultation stops telling policymakers what the public thinks and undermines trust. She added that the problem has no easy answer: barriers that keep bots out also make it harder for real people to take part, and AI makes fake responses far harder to spot. Better screening and more transparency will help, she said, but there is "no single fix".

A DHSC spokesperson said the department's "robust controls" worked effectively, the fake responses were removed, and the consultation helped inform the action to create a smoke-free generation. The spokesperson added that the department will remain alert to interference of this kind in future and "will not be deterred from doing what is necessary to promote healthier living".