The record of how evidence was made · England and Wales · 2026
PoliceAI asks forces to pause generative AI in court statements
National PoliceAI centre launched 10 June 2026 · Alex Murray, Head of PoliceAI · the accuracy standard set at “beyond reasonable doubt”
Page built 4 August 2026 from news reporting. We have not yet obtained the guidance document itself, and we mark this page UNVERIFIED against primary sources until we do.
Within days of the national PoliceAI centre launching on 10 June 2026, its head asked some police forces to pause the use of generative AI in preparing court documents while safeguards are developed. The reported reason is that several forces in England and Wales had begun using commercially available generative tools to turn officer interviews into court statements and to prepare disclosure documents.
The standard he set
Alex Murray, Head of PoliceAI, is reported to have said that technologies used within the criminal justice system must achieve a standard of accuracy that is “beyond reasonable doubt”.
That is worth sitting with. It is the criminal standard of proof, applied not to the evidence but to the tool that helped produce it. No generative model meets it, and none is close, because the failure mode is not rare and it is not detectable from the output. The practical consequence is not that forces stop using the tools. It is that the burden moves to the record: who used what, for which document, and which parts a named person personally verified.
What prompted it
- BeforeSeveral forces in England and Wales begin using commercially available generative AI to convert officer interviews into court statements and to prepare disclosure-related documents.
- ReportedWest Midlands Police rely on Microsoft Copilot output that invents a past match involving Maccabi Tel Aviv. The invented match appears in a dossier supporting a proposed ban on away supporters at the club's fixture against Aston Villa.
- 10 Jun 2026The national PoliceAI centre launches.
- Days afterAlex Murray asks some forces to pause generative AI use in preparing court documents while safeguards are developed. Reporting differs on the exact date and we have not resolved it against the guidance itself.
- 14 Jun 2026The Derbyshire investigation is reported.
Why the football dossier is the clearer lesson
The invented match is the more instructive item, because nobody set out to deceive. A tool was asked a question, it produced a confident answer, the answer went into a document, and the document was used to argue for a restriction on several thousand people. At no point in that chain was there a record saying which assertions a person had checked.
That is not a policing problem. It is what happens to any document assembled from generative output without a record of human verification, and it is the same failure that produces fabricated citations in a brief. The difference is only in who pays for it.
Sources
- IBTimes UK, UK police told to halt AI use in court statements
- VinciWorks, Police told to pause AI-generated court statements
- Forbes, AI is writing police evidence and the original is vanishing, 15 June 2026
All sources are secondary. The primary document is the PoliceAI guidance itself, which we have not obtained. Checked 4 August 2026. Information, not legal advice.