UK Police Ordered to Stop Using AI for Court Statements

Forces across England and Wales have been instructed to halt the use of artificial intelligence tools when drafting statements destined for court proceedings. The directive reflects growing unease about the reliability of generative systems in evidentiary contexts, where hallucinated facts or subtly altered phrasing could undermine prosecutions and breach disclosure obligations.

The move places policing alongside other legal-adjacent professions wrestling with how to bound AI assistance. Statements submitted to court carry sworn weight, and any machine-mediated drafting raises questions about authorship, accuracy, and the chain of human judgement behind the words. Regulators appear unwilling to let those questions be answered case-by-case after a wrongful conviction or collapsed trial.

The broader signal is that UK authorities are tightening expectations around AI in high-stakes public functions ahead of formal rules, treating courtroom integrity as a domain where speed and convenience cannot justify probabilistic text generation.