UK police forces have been ordered to stop using generative AI to draft court statements and other criminal‑justice documents. Alex Murray, head of the Police.AI centre, said he intervened after forces deployed commercial tools without proper assessment. “Pause that,” he told the units, stressing that any technology in the justice chain must meet an accuracy standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

Police.AI, created this year under a £115mn Home Office reform, aims to shave workload equivalent to 3,000 officers from the 145,000‑strong force. Murray cited a recent “cautionary tale” when West Midlands Police relied on Microsoft’s Copilot, which fabricated a match involving Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and threatened a ban on supporters. The incident highlighted AI hallucinations that could corrupt evidence.

Murray argues that, with strict policies and validation, AI could free officers from hours of manual CCTV review and spare them from viewing harmful child‑abuse imagery. Police.AI is prototyping a classifier that flags illicit images on seized devices, letting humans sample only vetted material. Until robust checks are currently in place, the stop‑gap remains in force across England and Wales.