AI bots sent 90,835 fake replies to UK consultation on disposable vapes ban, research finds

Tens of thousands of fake responses generated by AI bots were sent to a UK government consultation in 2023 on a proposal to ban disposable vapes. The finding was disclosed in research published on Tuesday.

The research was published in the journal Tobacco Control by health policy experts Dr Nason Maani, from the University of Edinburgh, and Prof Anna Gilmore, of the University of Bath.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) used bot-detection methods to identify that 90,835 of the 118,756 responses it received, 76%, were submitted by bots.

All but two of those 90,835 automated responses answered the same question in the 'smoke free generation' consultation, in which they opposed then prime minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative government's plan to ban disposable vapes.

The DHSC said the submissions were often duplicated many times and sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses.

The researchers said the bombardment appears to be the first documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation in the UK.

Maani said that while this attempt was identified, the threat is that future campaigns become harder to catch, and what cannot be caught is not known about. Such campaigns are a threat, he said, because they raise the possibility of a handful of powerful interests looking like a mass movement.

The DHSC excluded the 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.

Caroline Cerny, the deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said evidence that AI bots had been used to swamp a Department of Health consultation was deeply concerning. Citing the tobacco industry's history of seeking to undermine public health regulation, she called for alertness to the risk and for safeguards to be in place.

Azzurra Moores, the associate director for information ecosystems at the thinktank Demos, described the attempt as pretty alarming. Public consultations are one of the main ways government opens up its decision-making, she said, so any interference with them is a serious concern.

Moores added that if a consultation can be swamped in this way, it stops telling policymakers what the public actually thinks and undermines trust in the process. Every barrier that keeps bots out also makes it harder for real people to take part, she said, and AI makes fake responses far harder to spot, so there is no single fix.

The DHSC said its robust controls identified the attempt to influence the consultation. A spokesperson said those controls worked effectively, the fake responses were removed, and the consultation helped inform the action being taken to create a smoke-free generation. The department said it would remain alert to interference of this kind in future consultations.