West Midlands Police used a Microsoft Copilot hallucination to help justify banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans

West Midlands Police·Microsoft Copilot (used for police intelligence assessment)

Officers used Microsoft Copilot to help compile threat intelligence ahead of a Europa League fixture, and the tool hallucinated a violent clash involving Maccabi Tel Aviv fans that never happened; that fabricated account was folded into the intelligence picture used to advise Birmingham's Safety Advisory Group to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the Aston Villa match.

Blast radius

Away fans were banned from an international fixture, triggering a national political crisis; the Chief Constable retired amid the fallout, the force was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and a Home Affairs Committee inquiry found the force 'overly reliant on inaccurate and unverified information for decision making that proved wholly inadequate to stand up to subsequent scrutiny'.

Root cause

Generative AI output was used to help assess a public-safety threat level without being checked against primary source material, and it was accepted uncritically because it reinforced a pre-held narrative.

How it was caught

Not caught until after the ban and match, when journalists and the Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee scrutinised the underlying 'evidence' and found the described violence had not occurred as claimed.

What changed

The force's acting Chief Constable paused and 'turned off' use of Copilot pending the IOPC investigation; the Home Affairs Committee recommended governance reforms, including ending the practice of councillors sitting on Safety Advisory Groups.

Take-awayNever let unverified generative-AI output feed into a high-stakes public-safety or civil-liberties decision without independent verification against primary sources.