AI bots wrote 76% of responses to UK consultation on disposable vape ban

AI bots submitted 90,835 of the 118,756 responses (76%) to the UK government’s 2023 consultation on creating a smoke-free generation and restricting disposable vape sales, according to a short report in the journal Tobacco Control that drew on published consultation reports and Freedom of Information requests to the Department of Health and Social Care, which flagged the responses as fraudulent using bot-detection methods. Per the journal’s publisher, BMJ Group, all of the bot responses answered a single multiple-choice question in opposition to restricting disposable vapes; with them removed, 77% of valid respondents supported the restrictions, which became law when the Tobacco and Vapes Act received Royal Assent on April 29, 2026. The researchers call it the first documented large-scale automated interference in a formal public health consultation, and say they could not identify who was behind it or verify the department’s detection methods, which are not public.