A UK government consultation on tobacco and vaping policy received tens of thousands of machine-generated responses in what researchers identify as the first coordinated attempt to use artificial intelligence to influence health policymaking in the country. The Department of Health and Social Care employed bot-detection methods and determined that 90,835 of the 118,756 total responses it received, representing 76%, were submitted by automated systems rather than individual people.
The automated submissions overwhelmingly opposed the Conservative government’s proposed ban on disposable vapes. According to the health department, these responses were frequently duplicated multiple times and sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses. All but two of the bot-generated messages answered the same question in the consultation, which was titled the “smoke free generation” initiative. Health policy researchers Dr Nason Maani of the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath documented the incident in research published in the journal Tobacco Control and noted it appeared to represent the first formally documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a public health policy consultation.
The health department excluded the automated responses from its decision-making process. The Labour government, which took office in 2024, subsequently inherited the tobacco and vapes bill and passed it into law, including the prohibition on businesses selling or supplying disposable vapes. Public health advocates expressed concern about the implications of such interference campaigns, noting that while this attempt was identified and neutralized, future efforts may become increasingly difficult to detect. Officials and experts emphasized that decisions affecting public health must rely on genuine evidence and authentic public input rather than manipulated response numbers, and called for improved safeguards against similar interference in future consultations.
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