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AI bots flooded 2023 UK government consultation on disposable vapes ban

AI bots flooded a government consultation with tens of thousands of fake responses in a failed attempt to stop the UK’s ban on disposable vapes. Three-quarters of all the responses to the 2023 consultation on the tobacco and vapes bill were machine-generated, in what is thought to be the first coordinated attempt to use AI to derail health policymaking in the UK. The attempt to manipulate the outcome of the consultation was disclosed on Tuesday in research published in the journal Tobacco Control by the health p…

By the Truvace desk2 min read1 sourceEvidence: Emerging · 47/100 — News report · n = 118,756 · 1 independent sourceJournalismTRV-2026-2291· cite & verify
AI bots flooded 2023 UK government consultation on disposable vapes ban

In brief

Research published in Tobacco Control found that bots submitted most responses to the 2023 consultation on the tobacco and vapes bill. The health department identified 90,835 of 118,756 responses as automated, nearly all answering one question and opposing the planned disposable vape ban.

The case matters because consultations are a main route for public input, and AI makes fake responses harder to spot. The department says its controls worked and it excluded the bot responses, but researchers warn that future campaigns may evade detection, and what goes uncaught remains unknown.

Main points

  1. The Department of Health and Social Care used bot-detection methods to flag 76% of the 118,756 responses as automated.
  2. All but two of the automated responses answered the same question and opposed the disposable vape ban.
  3. The submissions were often duplicated many times and sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses.
  4. The department excluded the automated responses from its decision-making, and the ban later became law under the Labour government.

The problem

Automated AI-driven submissions made up 76% of responses to a UK public health consultation, threatening to distort policymaking by making a few interests look like a mass movement.

The rundown

The study was written by Dr Nason Maani of the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath. They describe it as the first documented large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation in the UK.

The bots were detected through duplication and high-frequency submissions from few IP addresses. The department removed the fake responses, and the tobacco and vapes bill passed in 2024 including the ban on selling or supplying disposable vapes.

Commentators say the findings raise concerns about trust in consultations and tobacco industry influence. A Demos expert noted that barriers against bots also make it harder for real people to take part, so no single fix exists.

Sources

  1. JournalismThe Guardian2026-10-27

The debate