Police AI is the UK’s bold new delivery agency bringing responsible AI into frontline policing. In this episode, I sat down with Interim Director Alex Murray to talk about how AI is freeing officers from laptops, the governance frameworks being built, and the £75 million mandate to save millions of hours of police productivity time.
What Is Police AI?
Police AI isn’t a think tank or an academic body — it’s a delivery agency with a clear mandate to get responsible AI into frontline policing across England and Wales. Alex was very clear about that distinction. The goal, as he put it, is to “put humanity back into policing” by reducing the administrative burden that pulls officers away from communities and onto laptops.
The Use Cases Already in Motion
Some of the early wins are genuinely compelling, even if they’re not headline-grabbing. Here’s where Police AI is focusing first:
- Child abuse imagery triage: AI to help find, classify and triage material — reducing how much officers have to personally view.
- CCTV analytics: After a serious crime, forces ingest hundreds of hours of footage. AI can search it for a specific vehicle or partial registration plate instantly.
- Crime counting and classification: Nearly 500 pages of crime counting rules. AI can help classify incidents accurately and consistently.
- Disclosure: What once took an hour now takes investigators weeks due to terabytes of digital evidence. AI can dramatically cut that time.
- Transcription and translation: Common technology, but applied carefully in policing where error rates in the criminal justice system really matter.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents: Using existing enterprise tools across forces in a governed, scalable way.
Buy or Build? Both.
Alex was honest about the buy-versus-build question. You don’t want 43 police forces each building their own models — they don’t have the engineers or the budget for that. Police AI’s role is to build where it’s unique, buy where the private sector excels, and critically, invest in a lab to test, evaluate and verify every claim made by tech companies. As he put it, claims of 100% accuracy simply don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Governance and Public Trust
Every Chief Constable has signed up to what Alex calls the AI Covenant — high-level principles around robustness, transparency and explainability. They’ve partnered with Northumbria University to turn those principles into a detailed responsible AI checklist, covering bias, human training on outputs, legality and proportionality. A public-facing register of AI tools in use is also being developed.
One thing Alex said really stuck with me: the biggest governance challenge isn’t oversight — it’s the lack of AI engineers. There are endless studies on responsible AI, but meanwhile criminals are moving fast. Chief Constables need to invest more in AI architects and solution architects, not just governance frameworks.
Scaling AI Literacy Across Policing
Training is going out now, developed with the College of Policing. The core message to officers: you own the output. If an AI claims something, you check it. The model doesn’t carry responsibility — you do. That’s a cultural shift, not just a technical one.
The Vision for Year Three
Alex’s ambition is clear. In three years, he wants a police service where officers do what they’re best at — engaging with people and solving crimes — while AI handles the administrative load. He also wants policing to be better equipped to tackle criminals who are already using AI to scale their own operations. And perhaps most fascinatingly, he’s thinking about what it means to lead a workforce of both people and agents — a genuinely new leadership challenge for Chief Constables.
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Key Statistics
– Police AI has a £75 million budget over three years to deliver responsible AI into frontline policing.
– The agency must save between 3 to 6 million hours of police productivity time over the period.
– Public acceptance of police using AI sits at around 58 to 60 percent, according to Home Office and mayoral surveying.
– An organisation called Centric, based in Sheffield, interviewed 10,000 people on public attitudes to police AI use.
– West Midlands Police went from worst to best performing force in the country after deploying AI on 101 calls.
– German police have invested €300 million over ten years in AI and data engineering capability.
About the Podcast Host
AI and Communications Specialist | Author | Podcaster | International Speaker
Joanne Sweeney is a recognised leader in digital marketing and digital transformation, specialising in the practical application of AI to enhance communication strategies. The founder of Digital Training Institute, Joanne, empowers leaders and communications professionals to leverage AI responsibly and effectively, ensuring transparency, trust, and tangible results.
She completed the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Programme in AI and Public Policy this summer before launching her fourth book AI Playbook, in September. Joanne has also published two editions of Public Sector Marketing Pro, which were preceded by her first title, Social Media Under Investigation Law Enforcement and the Social Web.
Her books have become go-to resources for governments, public sector and policing agencies, as well as marketing and communications professionals, all navigating the challenges of the changing Internet.
Joanne is the host of the AI SIX Podcast, a daily six-minute podcast that provides actionable insights, expert interviews, and practical advice to help professionals navigate the new world of work.
