The head of one of Britain's largest police forces has admitted that Microsoft, Copilot, made a mistake in an intelligence report. The report, which led to Israeli fans being banned from a match last year, included a non-existent match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
See also: Hackers exploit Copilot Studio's new Connected Agents feature
Copilot “imagined” the match and West Midlands Police included the error in its intelligence report. “ On Friday evening I was informed that the incorrect result regarding the West Ham v Maccabi Tel Aviv match occurred as a result of the use of Microsoft Copilot ,” Craig Guildford , chief constable of West Midlands Police, said in a letter to the Home Affairs Committee earlier this week.
Guildford had previously denied in December that West Midlands Police had used AI to prepare the report, blaming “social media scraping” for the error.
See also: LG installed Copilot on its TVs, but you can delete it
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from a Europa League match against Aston Villa in November last year because the Birmingham Security Advisory Group deemed the match “high risk” following “violent clashes and hate crimes” at a previous Maccabi match in Amsterdam.
As Microsoft warns at the bottom of the Copilot interface, “Copilot can make mistakes.” However, this is a pretty high-profile mistake. Copilot was recently retested and found that Microsoft’s AI assistant often “made mistakes” and “invented things.”
See also: Microsoft Copilot's holiday ad is full of empty promises
Microsoft has been informed of the Copilot incident, but the company did not respond in a timely manner regarding it.
