AI bots flooded 2023 UK government consultation on disposable vapes ban
Three-quarters of all responses were machine-generated in failed attempt to stop bill from passing into law, research finds AI bots flooded a government consultation with tens of thousands of fake responses in a failed attempt to stop the UK’s ban on disposable vapes. Three-quarters of all the responses to the 2023 consultation on the tobacco and vapes bill were machine-generated, in what is…
Research reveals that AI bots inundated a recent UK government consultation on a ban for disposable vapes with a majority of its responses, in a desperate effort to prevent the ban from becoming law. The 2023 consultation on the tobacco and vapes bill saw 90,835 out of 118,756 responses, or 76%, generated by bots, according to a study published in the journal Tobacco Control.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) identified the bots, excluding them from their decision-making process. The vast majority of these automated responses were against the ban, appearing in the consultation's "smoke free generation" section. The researchers labeled this the first recorded instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal health policy consultation.
While the DHSC successfully filtered out the bot-generated responses, the threat of future AI campaigns remains, potentially masquerading as mass movements. Health policy experts are concerned that technological advances may be used to undermine public health regulation, emphasizing the need for safeguards to ensure decisions are based on sound evidence and expertise.
Written by urgent.news from Guardian Health's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
