AI bots in the vape consultation made up more than three quarters of responses to a 2023 government process on the UK’s vapes and tobacco bill, according to a study published in Tobacco Control on Tuesday. Researchers found that the automated submissions opposed proposed restrictions on disposable vape sales, but the government excluded them from its final consultation report.
The Department of Health and Social Care identified 90,835 of 118,756 responses as fraudulent. Those submissions were not counted in final decision making, leaving the consultation’s reported result substantially different from what the unfiltered totals would have shown.
AI Bots in the Vape Consultation Targeted One Question
Dr Nason Maani of the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath analyzed the responses. The study found that every bot-generated submission consisted only of multiple-choice selections.
All but two of those responses targeted a single question opposing restrictions on disposable vape sales. The same number of responses said the submitter had learned about the consultation through social media, according to the researchers.
After the bot responses were removed, 79.6 per cent of valid respondents supported restrictions on disposable vape sales. That was the reverse of the result the unfiltered dataset would have indicated.
The researchers described the episode as apparently the first documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation. They said the aim of the bots was “not known.”
Researchers Warn of Risks to Public Consultation
The scale and consistency of the submissions suggested a “coordinated campaign,” the researchers wrote. They said the pattern was consistent with prior evidence of tobacco industry efforts to manipulate public consultations through mass coordinated submissions. The study did not identify who operated the bots.
The episode joins wider questions about how health agencies assess digital submissions and public input. Meditech Today has also covered federal health technology oversight, the regulatory hurdles facing digital health companies, and an open digital health network. These stories address separate developments across health technology and policy.
The researchers warned that growing bot sophistication could make it more important to detect automated submissions and protect democratic processes from AI interference. They wrote that stronger detection capacity and governance safeguards would be essential as bots become more sophisticated and consultations expand across regulatory areas, particularly in lower-resource settings where screening infrastructure may be absent.
Caroline Cerny, deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, told The Guardian that evidence of AI bots overwhelming a Department of Health consultation was “deeply concerning.” She said the tobacco industry’s history of seeking to undermine public health regulation made vigilance necessary as technology advances.
Cerny said decisions affecting public health should rest on sound evidence and expertise, rather than manipulated response numbers. The study’s findings put that concern against a concrete example: thousands of automated selections were identified and set aside before the consultation informed final decision making.
The researchers’ stated next step is to strengthen detection capacity and governance safeguards as public consultations expand. Their warning places particular emphasis on settings where screening infrastructure may be absent.
