An analysis published this week in the journal Tobacco Control has revealed that an avalanche of bots had flooded a British Government consultation with thousands of responses in desperate efforts to influence the country’s ban on disposable vapes, reports The Independent.
The Department of Health and Social Care said that more than 75% of the responses to the government’s Vapes and Tobacco Bill consultation in 2023 were generated by bots as part of a failed attempt to stop the legislation. It said it had identified 90 835 of the 118 756 responses as fraudulent and excluded them from the consultation report, meaning the views submitted by the bots were not taken into account in final decision-making.
Researchers Dr Nason Maani, from the University of Edinburgh, and Professor Anna Gilmore, of the University of Bath, said the aim of the bots is “not known”.
The study found all the bot-generated responses consisted solely of multiple-choice selections, and that all but two targeted a single question opposing proposed restrictions on disposable vape sales, with the same number reporting they had learnt of the consultation through social media.
Once bot responses were excluded, researchers said 79.6% of valid respondents supported restrictions on disposable vape sales – the reverse of what the unfiltered dataset would have shown.
“This appears to be the first documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation,” the paper reads.
The scale and consistency of the bot responses suggested a “co-ordinated campaign” that was consistent with “prior evidence of tobacco industry efforts to manipulate public consultations through mass co-ordinated submissions”, said the researchers.
Speaking to The Guardian, Caroline Cerny, the deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “Evidence that AI bots have been used to swamp a Department of Health consultation is deeply concerning.
“Given the tobacco industry’s history of seeking to undermine public health regulation, we need to be alert to the risk that technological advances can be used to further commercial interests around health policy and put safeguards in place.”
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Ban disposable vapes by 2024, urges UK council
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