Skip to content

AI bots flooded UK disposable‑vapes consultation in 2023

newsOct 28, 202622440

Research published in Tobacco Control found that 90,835 of 118,756 responses to the UK 2023 tobacco and vapes bill consultation, 76 percent, were identified by the Department of Health and Social Care as machine-generated. All but two of those automated responses answered the same question in the “smoke free generation” consultation and opposed a government plan to ban disposable vapes; submissions were often duplicated, sent at high frequency, and traced to a small number of IP addresses. The study’s authors are Dr Nason Maani from the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath, who described the incident as the first documented large-scale automated interference in a UK public health consultation. The DHSC said its bot-detection methods excluded the 90,835 automated responses from 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. Experts quoted in the reporting warned this campaign shows how technological advances could let a few interests appear as a mass movement and that stronger screening and transparency are needed, though screening also risks making real participation harder, according to Azzurra Moores of Demos and Caroline Cerny of Action on Smoking and Health.

1 source