aceAI 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…
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.
Researchers warn that this attempt was caught but future campaigns may be harder to detect, so the true scale of such interference is unknown.
Evidence
- JournalismThe Guardian2026-10-27
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Truvace Impact Record TRV-2026-2291, v1: “AI bots flooded 2023 UK government consultation on disposable vapes ban.” Truvace, 2026-10-28. /record/TRV-2026-2291 (accessed at citation time). sha256 c10a90c464fe0859…
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