Overview
- In a letter to Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee, West Midlands Police chief constable Craig Guildford acknowledged that Microsoft Copilot hallucinated a match referenced in an intelligence report.
- Guildford apologized for earlier denying AI use, saying he initially believed the information came from a Google search and social media scraping.
- The flawed report contributed to Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group classifying Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv on November 6 as high risk, resulting in a ban on away supporters.
- According to the BBC, more than 700 officers were deployed for the match, and protests took place outside the stadium.
- Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told Parliament she has lost confidence in Guildford, while Microsoft says Copilot aggregates web sources with linked citations and warns users to verify results.