A senior Derbyshire detective faces a watchdog probe as UK police using ChatGPT to help him with his inquiries.
According to the Financial Times, one member of staff at Gloucestershire police has already been dismissed over unauthorised ChatGPT use, and now the Independent Office for Police Conduct has begun investigating an officer referred by Derbyshire Constabulary.
The referral followed an internal review of the officer’s use of AI.
A person familiar with events said the case involved a detective chief inspector alleged to have used AI to maintain decision logs.
Senior investigators keep those logs during investigations to record why each step was taken. Those logs can be disclosed to defence lawyers during court cases, which makes bunging them into a chatbot look particularly daft.
The Derbyshire officer is the most senior UK police figure known to face investigation over alleged AI misuse. In June, the FT revealed Derbyshire police had started a criminal investigation into another, more junior detective.
That case involved allegations of perverting the course of justice using AI chatbots while preparing material for court cases. Official restrictions are meant to keep court evidence clear of the inaccurate hallucinations generated by many AI systems.
They are meant to protect the confidentiality of police information too, rather than feeding it into some corporate magic text box.
In Gloucestershire, a police staff member was dismissed after bypassing safeguards to use an AI chatbot for police-related work on numerous occasions.
The IOPC said: “Derbyshire Constabulary made a voluntary conduct referral to us on 23 June following an internal review of an officer’s use of artificial intelligence and concerns it was not in line with guidance and conditions issued by the force.”
The watchdog said the matter warranted an investigation.
“The officer in question has been served notice that they are under investigation for alleged gross misconduct,” it said.
Derbyshire police confirmed it had referred an officer to the IOPC over AI use.
“This investigation is being independently led by the IOPC and we are unable to comment further,” the force added.
It was not clear which police rules the alleged misconduct broke.
Allowing an outside AI system to access information about an investigation could compromise confidentiality.
A Crown Prosecution Service official indicated defence lawyers had been informed in any cases affected by the officer’s alleged conduct.
The Gloucestershire worker, who was not named by the force, is the first UK police staff member known to have been dismissed over AI misuse.
According to the misconduct allegations, the staff member had used AI regularly for police work since October 2024. They continued after the force introduced a system on 3 December 2024 to block access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
“It was discovered in March 2025 that the person had been circumnavigating the system to continue to use it, resulting in their immediate suspension,” the force said.
The person was dismissed in the past few weeks. One misconduct count alleged the person had compromised confidential information by putting it into the chatbot.
An investigation later showed the information entered into the bot had been publicly available. In the case of the more junior Derbyshire detective, the force said its investigation covered the alleged use of AI chatbots to prepare court documents.
police AI, ChatGPT, Derbyshire police, Gloucestershire police, IOPC, artificial intelligence, court evidence, police misconduct, UK technology
