AI Bots Flood UK Vape Consultation: 90,835 Fake Responses Attempt to Derail Public Health Policy

First Documented Case of AI-Driven Manipulation in Public Health Policy

AI bots flooded the UK's 2023 public consultation on creating a smoke-free generation with 90,835 fraudulent responses, representing 76% of all submissions received by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)1

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. This large-scale automated interference marks the first documented instance of AI bots attempting to derail a formal public health policy consultation, according to research published in the Tobacco Control journal1

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. The coordinated campaign specifically targeted questions about restricting disposable vapes, with AI bot-generated responses overwhelmingly opposing the proposed ban3

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Coordinated Attack Targeted Single Question on Disposable Vapes

Out of 118,756 total responses submitted to the public consultation, the DHSC identified 90,835 as fraudulent using bot detection methods1

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. All but two of these AI bot-generated responses answered the same multiple-choice question opposing proposed restrictions on disposable vapes2

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. The submissions were often duplicated many times and sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses, according to the DHSC2

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. The same number of fraudulent responses reported learning about the public consultation via social media, suggesting a coordinated approach to manipulating policy-making processes1

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Real Public Opinion Revealed After Removing Fraudulent Responses

After the DHSC excluded the 90,835 automated responses from its decision-making, the data revealed a dramatically different picture of public sentiment. When fraudulent responses were removed, 77% of valid respondents actually supported restrictions on the ban on disposable vapes—the complete opposite of what the unfiltered data set would have indicated1

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. According to the analysis, 79.6% of legitimate respondents favored implementing restrictions on disposable vapes3

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. This stark reversal demonstrates how AI-driven manipulation can completely distort public opinion data and potentially mislead policymakers about citizen preferences on critical health regulations.

Echoes of Big Tobacco Lobbying Tactics in Digital Age

Dr. Nason Maani from the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore from the University of Bath, who conducted the research, noted that the scale and directional consistency of bot responses suggest a coordinated campaign1

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. While researchers couldn't independently verify the commercial origins of the campaign, they pointed out that transnational tobacco companies have historically sought to swamp public consultations with favorable responses using mass recruitment campaigns and postcard submissions1

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. Caroline Cerny, deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, stated that given Big Tobacco's history of seeking to undermine public health regulation, there's a need to be alert to how technological advances can be used to further commercial interests around health policy2

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. The manipulation effort using AI bots in this UK smoke-free generation public consultation is eerily similar to traditional lobbying tactics employed by tobacco industry interests3

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Policy Passed Despite Interference, But Future Threats Loom

The Tobacco and Vapes Act received royal assent on April 29, 2026, making it illegal to ever sell tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, and restricting the supply and sale of disposable vapes1

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. Keir Starmer's Labour government inherited the bill in 2024 and successfully passed it into law, including the ban on businesses selling or supplying disposable vapes2

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. However, Dr. Maani warned that "the threat is that future campaigns become harder to catch, and what we can't catch, we don't know about"2

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. Azzurra Moores from the thinktank Demos described the situation as "pretty alarming," noting that every barrier keeping bots out also makes it harder for real people to participate, and AI makes fake responses far harder to spot2

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. As bot sophistication increases and public consultations expand across regulatory contexts, strengthening detection capacity and governance safeguards will be essential to maintaining policy integrity, particularly in lower-resource settings where screening infrastructure may be absent1

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