West Midlands Police Reportedly Relied on Erroneous Copilot-Generated Intelligence in Maccabi Tel Aviv Away-Fan Ban Decision

West Midlands Police reportedly included inaccurate intelligence purportedly generated using Microsoft Copilot in materials used to justify banning Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending a November 2025 Europa League match against Aston Villa. The reported Copilot-linked error, which referred to a match that had not taken place, was later acknowledged by Chief Constable Craig Guildford.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 3 Misinformation
• Primary risk subdomain: 3.1 False or misleading information

The AI system generated a completely fictitious football match (an AI hallucination), which misled police officers and led to the decision to ban away fans based on false information.

Additional risk subdomains

• 5.1 Overreliance and unsafe use: Police officers over-relied on the unverified output of a general-purpose AI tool for critical public safety and intelligence reporting.

Causal factors

• Entity: AI
• Intent: Unintentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by an AI hallucination from Microsoft Copilot, which unintentionally generated a fictitious football match that was then relied upon post-deployment.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The system involved is Microsoft Copilot, a general-purpose AI search assistant and chatbot, which falls under the category of AI systems requiring transparency about their nature.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft)
• AI purpose: Content Search; Question Answering
• Behaviour type: Assistant
• Alleged developer: Microsoft
• Alleged deployer: West Midlands Police
• Alleged harmed parties: Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C., Jewish community in Birmingham and the West Midlands, Epistemic integrity

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Differential treatment

Reported: Yes, the report describes the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the match, which represents differential treatment based on the false intelligence.

Directly caused: The false intelligence directly contributed to the decision to reduce the ticket allocation for Maccabi Tel Aviv fans to zero, preventing them from attending the fixture.

Inferred additional harm: The ban singled out the Jewish and Israeli supporter base of Maccabi Tel Aviv, which regional representatives noted felt like an attack on the Jewish community.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the report explicitly describes epistemic harm in the form of an AI hallucination that fabricated a non-existent football match.

Directly caused: Microsoft Copilot fabricated a fictitious match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham United on November 9, 2023, which was then presented as factual intelligence in a police report.

Indirectly caused: The fabrication misled police commanders, the Safety Advisory Group, and initially parliament, polluting the official record with false information.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 1000
• People reportedly exposed: 1000

Potential causes

Management

• Weak Strategic Oversight: Senior levels failed to apply strategic oversight to the planning process.
• Failure to Declare Critical Incident: Commanders did not declare a critical incident despite rising public concern.
• Lack of Proactive Briefings: Management failed to proactively brief the Police and Crime Commissioner.

Technology

• AI Hallucination in Copilot: Microsoft Copilot generated a fictitious match between Maccabi and West Ham.
• Unreliable AI Search Tool: Copilot was used as a search tool but produced false historical records.

Data Inputs

• Unverified External Sources: Information from Dutch police and other sources was conflated or unverified.
• Lack of Data Validation: AI-generated search results were not verified against official records.

Human Factors

• Confirmation Bias: Officers accepted false data that supported their preferred tactical option.
• Overreliance on AI Output: An individual accepted Copilot's hallucination without manual verification.
• Misleading Public Statements: Senior leadership made incorrect statements regarding AI use to MPs.

Process and Methods

• Bypassing Intelligence Structure: Intelligence report did not pass through the dedicated validation structure.
• Exclusion of Intelligence Commander: The intelligence bronze commander was not involved in preparing the report.
• Poor Record Keeping: Handwritten notes of key meetings were disposed of instead of being retained.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports provide clear, official details from a formal inspection by HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary. The role of Microsoft Copilot in generating the hallucinated match is explicitly confirmed by a police interviewee, and the Chief Constable publicly apologized for the error, leaving very little ambiguity about the AI's role and the resulting decision.
• Ambiguities identified: There was initial confusion and contradictory statements from WMP leadership regarding whether AI was used, but this was resolved by the inspector's findings.
• Alternative interpretations: None. The facts of the AI hallucination and its inclusion in the report are well-established.

A West Midlands Police officer used Microsoft Copilot to gather intelligence for a football match report, resulting in an AI hallucination of a fictitious match. This false intelligence led to banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and caused the Chief Constable to unwittingly mislead a parliamentary committee. While not a hostile attack, it highlights operational vulnerabilities in public sector AI integration.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: United Kingdom
• Alleged perpetrator: West Midlands Police

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The event has concluded and represents an operational and systemic risk rather than an active, immediate national security threat.
• Autonomy: Human-supervised. The AI acted as an assistant to retrieve information, with humans retaining final decision-making authority, though they failed to validate the output.
• Novelty: Evolved capability. Represents an evolution of the established risk of AI hallucinations, demonstrating how unverified outputs can directly pollute official law enforcement intelligence.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical systems, critical infrastructure, or physical safety were compromised or threatened in this incident.
• Information security: Minor. Local police intelligence report was compromised by an AI hallucination, leading to unverified information being used in official planning, but no adversarial intelligence compromise occurred.
• Sovereignty: Minor. The incident led to misleading information being presented to a parliamentary select committee, temporarily undermining democratic oversight and police accountability.
• Economic security: Negligible. No significant threats to economic stability, strategic industries, or technological competitive advantage were reported.
• Societal stability: Minor. The decision to ban supporters based on false intelligence restricted freedom of movement for approximately 1,000 fans, raising minor civil liberties concerns.