Artificial intelligence bots submitted more than 90,000 fake responses to a UK government consultation on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, accounting for 76% of all received input. The automated effort attempted to derail legislation banning disposable vapes before health officials detected and purged the submissions.
The findings were detailed in a study published in Tobacco Control by Dr. Nason Maani of the University of Edinburgh and Professor Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath. Researchers identified the incident as the first recorded large-scale automated attempt to manipulate a British health policy consultation.
Automated Accounts Target Disposable Vape Rules
The Department of Health and Social Care deployed bot-detection protocols after noticing irregular submission patterns. Officials discovered that 90,835 of the 118,756 total submissions came from automated tools rather than genuine members of the public.
All but two of the automated entries targeted a specific question regarding a "smoke-free generation." The messages were sent at high frequency from a concentrated cluster of IP addresses, repeating identical phrasing to oppose the ban on single-use devices initially proposed under Rishi Sunak’s administration.
Dr. Maani warned that detecting such operations will become more difficult as technology evolves:
"The threat is that future campaigns become harder to catch, and what we can't catch, we don't know about. Such campaigns are a threat because they raise the possibility of a handful of powerful interests looking like a mass movement."
Health Groups Urge Stricter Safeguards
The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed that its screening protocols successfully excluded every automated response, ensuring that the final policy reflected legitimate input. Keir Starmer's government inherited the bill in 2024 and subsequently passed it into law, prohibiting businesses from selling or supplying disposable vapes.
Public health advocates expressed alarm over the technological breach. Caroline Cerny, deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, emphasized the need for vigilance against corporate lobbying tactics:
"Given the tobacco industry's history of seeking to undermine public health regulation, we need to be alert to the risk that technological advances can be used to further commercial interests around health policy and put safeguards in place."
Azzurra Moores of the think tank Demos noted that while tighter screening is essential, departments must balance security measures to avoid locking out genuine citizens from public discussions.
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