MOZOM vergelijkt
MOZOM compares: tobacco AI, citizen participation or lobby machine?
- Source
- MOZOM vergelijkt
- MOZOM headline
- MOZOM compares: tobacco AI, citizen participation or lobby machine?
- Original headline
- Tobacco giant lets AI write 'public responses' against stricter EU rules: 'This is cheating'
- Author
- MOZOM-redactie
- Date
- 30 juni 2026 om 01:02
- Subject
- Research by NOS and Pointer into AI-generated responses in European tobacco consultations and the boundary between citizen participation and organized lobbying.
Summary of the original report
NOS, the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation, and Pointer, the research platform of KRO-NCRV in the Netherlands, report that tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris has deployed an AI tool around European plans for stricter rules for vapes, e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches. The European Commission in Brussels is holding a public consultation on this, a phase in which citizens and organizations can respond to proposed policy. According to NOS and Pointer, they analyzed approximately 65,000 responses from fifteen EU countries with the AI detector Pangram. About 30 percent would be written by artificial intelligence; According to the research, that share was 71 percent for Dutch responses. The message also states that the consultations have now yielded approximately 80,000 responses, much more than usual for many European bills. According to NOS, Philip Morris states that the responses ultimately come from concerned citizens, but the researchers cannot verify this.
Striking in this message
The word audience reactions is striking. That sounds democratic and spontaneous, but the technology behind it can be organised, commercial and partly automatic. The debate therefore shifts from for or against tobacco regulations to the reliability of the participation itself.
Less visible context
What remains less visible is that consultations are vulnerable to scale. A government can count thousands of responses, but counting is not the same as listening. When AI makes writing cheap, parties with money, data and distribution can produce mass noise faster than ordinary citizens. This affects not only tobacco policy, but all future consultation processes surrounding EU rules.
Possible message behind the news
One possible message is that AI is changing not only news, images and search results, but also the way political pressure is produced.
Neutral conclusion
The neutral conclusion: this is not just about tobacco. It is about how public participation remains reliable when companies can use AI to make thousands of responses sound like individual citizen voices.