AI bots flooded a 2023 UK government consultation on banning disposable vapes
Research published in the journal Tobacco Control revealed that three-quarters of responses to a 2023 UK government consultation on banning disposable vapes were machine-generated, in what is believed to be the first documented large-scale automated interference in a UK public health consultation. The Department of Health and Social Care used bot-detection methods to find that 90,835 of 118,756 responses, 76%, were submitted by bots, nearly all opposing the ban, often with duplicated text sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses. The department excluded the automated responses from its decision-making and the ban passed into law in 2024, but researchers warn future campaigns will become harder to catch as the technology improves. For a business or industry that takes part in public consultations or tries to influence regulatory decisions, the case shows that the integrity of a public consultation process can no longer be taken for granted.
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