Artificial Intelligence (AI)

FEATURE: With 2025 seeing some of the most disruptive cyberattacks in recent history, Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth explores the likely challenges for the 12 months ahead, and the threats and opportunities posed by the increasing evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) which will trust and resilience becoming key themes in cyber security.

FEATURE: As law enforcement around the world prepares to face the challenges of 2026, Editor Keith Potter looks back over the key issues Policing Insight covered in 2025 – from structural reform and the approaches to ongoing and evolving crime threats, to workforce wellbeing, the opportunities from artificial intelligence and new technology, and leadership insights – and how these may affect the next 12 months.

FEATURE: A new report from Europol’s Innovation Lab on the impact of robotics and unmanned systems on law enforcement highlights the range of new threats posed by technology such as drones and robots generating new types and patterns of crime, as well as the potential for policing to leverage such technology to respond to many of the key criminal challenges, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: Artificial intelligence (AI) AI is advancing rapidly, but human systems remain slow and often focused on immediate pressures; Odette Meli, former Co-ordinator of the Australian Federal Police’s Strategic Insights Centre, warns that without “leadership uplift and value-aligned governance” AI will amplify organisational weaknesses, and points to how policing in the UK, Australia and New Zealand have structured AI governance as an example of what can be done.

INNOVATION: As forces adopt new approaches to digital evidence, integrating privacy with intelligence tools is proving key to efficiency, prediction, and community trust; Simon Randall, CEO of automatic redaction specialists Pimloc, explores the technology opportunities available to police forces to ensure that privacy and productivity advance hand in hand.

OPINION: With police forces facing crime challenges at national and international levels, the 43-force structure across England and Wales can present a barrier to speedy and effective interventions; NTT DATA UK&I Executive Head of Public Safety and Justice Ian Rimington, Senior Director Brian Cliff, and Director Keith Ward, argue that closer digital collaboration between neighbouring forces would preserve local independence while giving officers the speed, clarity and unity of purpose to face crime that moves without borders.

INNOVATION: An award-winning pilot project launched by the Norwegian Police Service utilises artificial intelligence (AI), assisted reality and automated processes to help crime scene investigators enhance the quality of investigations during the ‘golden hour’, improve outcomes, and reduce costs; Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to Dr Bente Skattør and Superintendent Kjeld Helland-Hansen about the AI4Interviews project.

INNOVATION: Automation and digitisation are delivering increased efficiency and other benefits across wider society, and there are significant potential gains for UK policing and the criminal justice system; police and technology advisor Paul Kennedy, and former Detective Inspector Tina Macleod, an out-of-court resolutions (OoCRs) specialist, explore some of the opportunities arising for policing and criminal justice across a range of areas, and take a closer look at how the use of OoCRs could be transformed by the new technology.

OPINION: Despite growing momentum across society for the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI), policing – like many other sectors – is proving to be big on ambition but slow on adoption of the new technology; Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO of Content Guru, explores the reasons behind the slow adoption, the challenges around public trust and confidence, and how the successful introduction of AI into critical healthcare communications could provide lessons for policing.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Facial recognition has become an essential technology for law enforcement and government agencies. Retrospective facial recognition system is an ideal tool for this fast-paced world, because it helps officers to identify suspects in a fraction of the time.

OPINION: As the first digital natives of AI-fluent Generations Alpha and Beta come of age, law enforcement agencies and policymakers will face an unprecedented criminal landscape shaped by tech tools, hyper-personalized algorithms, and borderless digital worlds; Cognyte’s Yakir Bitterman, a Webint Product Owner and open-source intelligence specialist, explores the behavioral trends among digital natives, and looks ahead at the changing and challenging misinformation threat landscape that awaits them.

FEATURE: Policing and artificial intelligence (AI) experts from the UK, Australia, US, Canada and the UAE came together recently to explore international insights into policing in the age of AI, highlighting the challenges around improving tech capability, overcoming fragmentation, the need to engage and explain to the public and police staff, and the dangers of eroding police discretion, as well as the increasing threats from the criminal use of AI, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already starting to transform policing and other emergency services. Jamie Wilson of NiCE explains how the true benefits of AI lie in extracting valuable insights from data. A notable example of this is in emergency communications centres.

OPINION: Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasing role in policing – both in tackling crime and improving efficiency – with suggestions that it could also be key to improving public trust and confidence; but Leeds Trinity University Associate Professor Jonathan Jackson and PCDA Programme Lead Katie Oxley argue that while AI may offer valuable advantages, public trust and confidence also depend on the quality of interaction with individual officers, so ‘street craft’ and communication skills remain crucial.

OPINION: In the latest in a regular series of articles from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), Bedfordshire PCC John Tizard, the APCC’s Joint Lead on Performance, Data and New Tech Ethics, looks at the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and technology in policing, and highlights the steps he has taken in his own force around accountability and governance, which could help achieve the APCC’s aim of a roadmap towards a strong ethical governance framework with PCCs at the centre.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Today’s law enforcement leaders are pressured to do more with less – all while managing new waves of crime, volumes of complex data and growing demands for public transparency. That’s why departments across the globe are turning to evidence-based policing powered by data and AI, to improve decision making, build trust and work more efficiently.

INNOVATION: Following the recent launch of a new framework and principles for the “ethical and responsible” use of artificial intelligence (AI) across police forces by the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency (ANZPAA), Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to ANZPAA Policy & Research Officer Anastasia Pierakos about the aims of the guidance, the need to ensure the police use of AI is not “siloed” within specialist teams, and the importance of addressing issues such as transparency, accountability and oversight.

INNOVATION: As International Control Room Week gets underway, Essex Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper, the National Police Chiefs’ Council Contact Operations Lead, outlines the development of AI Post-Call Analysis, which produces concise, easy-to-read summaries of all incoming control room contact and automatically categorises calls by topic to enable rapid retrieval and analysis – one of a tranche of technical innovations designed to help forces “move from overwhelmed to empowered”.

OPINION: California has become the second US state to bring in legislation requiring transparent notice that artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to draft a police report; George Washington University’s Professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson believes that, with officers in some states using predictive text to write formal statements based on audio transcripts from body-worn cameras, transparency, the training of AI models, and understanding the risks of relying on AI are among the issues that need to be examined.

FEATURE: A recent paper published as part of collection of insights by the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation highlights the role played by social media and digital networks and algorithms in creating a landscape of online extremist antisemitism; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the risks to both Jewish communities and wider democracy set out in the paper, as well as efforts to counter the digital dangers.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Fraud is rising fast in the UK, fuelled by scams and schemes that thrive on social media. In this article, Fivecast’s David Janson examines why investigators need AI-powered open-source intelligence to uncover hidden networks and stay ahead of increasingly organised criminals.

INTERVIEW: With law enforcement increasingly looking to artificial intelligence (AI) to improve efficiency and enhance outcomes, forensic psychologist Dr Brandon May, Assistant Professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, fears that policing is becoming over-reliant on AI – particularly generative AI in areas such as investigative interviewing, which he argues require skills such as intuition, emotional intelligence or judgement that AI doesn’t have, as he explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: With the huge potential of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) beginning to be leveraged in policing, former long-serving police officer John Kilburn, now with data and AI specialists SAS, spoke to Policing Insight about some of the potential benefits of the new technology for both the policing and the public, the importance of transparent and explainable applications of AI, and how incremental approaches to developing systems within forces can lead to long-term gains.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Salesforce and Humberside Police have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to pioneer AI-powered policing. This new partnership sets out a blueprint for how technology can ease resource pressures, improve citizen trust, and modernise frontline services.