UK Police Attribute Intelligence Error to Microsoft Copilot

The chief constable of one of the UK’s largest police forces has acknowledged that Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant erred in a football intelligence report. This report, which resulted in a ban on Israeli football fans from attending a match last year, incorrectly mentioned a non-existent game between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Copilot fabricated the match, and West Midlands Police included this mistake in their intelligence report without verifying the information. Craig Guildford, chief constable of West Midlands Police, stated in a letter to the Home Affairs Committee that he became aware of the erroneous report concerning the West Ham vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv match due to the use of Microsoft Copilot. Previously, in December, Guildford had denied that AI was used in preparing the report, attributing the error to “social media scraping.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were prohibited from attending a Europa League match against Aston Villa in November of last year, as the Birmingham Safety Advisory Group classified the match as “high risk” following “violent clashes and hate crime offences” at a prior Maccabi match in Amsterdam.

As noted in Microsoft’s Copilot interface, “Copilot may make mistakes.” This particular error is quite significant. In recent tests, it was found that Copilot frequently “got things wrong” and “made stuff up.”

We reached out to Microsoft for clarification on why Copilot generated a fictional football match, but the company did not respond in time for this report.