Recently Microsoft Copilot was blamed for flawed intelligence used by West Midlands Police (WMP) to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a Europa League match in Birmingham. Knowing that garbage out with software is often due to garbage in, I attempted to use the Freedom of Information Act to acquire the prompts as well as the Copilot response.

WMP blocked the request with the Section 31 (1) (g) regulatory powers / Law enforcement exemption, now in theory this could be challenged with a robust Public Interest Test (PIT). Given the grounds for the exemption was the investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) I verified the scope of the investigation via their press office. A spokesperson for the IOPC provided a statement with an assurance that the “use of AI, including the prompts used and responses generated, will form an important part of our investigation.”

So at this time a PIT would almost certainly fail, that would change once the investigation and any resulting misconduct proceedings were complete. The AI prompts and response would provide an interesting insight for future application of AI for policing. A final note, the IOPC seemed unaware Microsoft made a statement to The Verge suggesting they were unable to reproduce Copilot hallucinating in the manner described by WMP, I passed the article on.