Government says PoliceAI could save 6 million officer hours a year
The government has announced a £75 million investment in a new national centre designed to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence across policing in England and Wales.
PoliceAI will work with forces to develop, test and scale AI technologies aimed at reducing bureaucracy, speeding up investigations and helping officers spend more time in frontline roles.
The initiative forms part of a wider £140 million investment in policing technology over the next three years and is expected by ministers to free up around six million hours of police time annually by 2028.
According to the Home Office, the centre will oversee large-scale trials of AI tools to help officers review, summarise and disclose digital evidence – one of the most time-consuming aspects of modern investigations.
The first pilots will run in up to ten forces during 2026-27 before a planned national rollout.
According to the government, early trials of the technology have already shown the scale of what is possible: 800 hours of footage in a kidnapping case reviewed in 3 hours, producing an early guilty plea; and half a million e-books of data translated instantly, leading to the arrest of a serious organised crime gang.
PoliceAI will also coordinate the policing response to AI-enabled crime through a new threat hub focused on emerging risks such as deepfake intimate images, while supporting efforts to tackle retail crime and tool theft.
Policing Minister Sarah Jones said the technology had the potential to improve access to data and intelligence, generate new evidential leads and free officers from administrative tasks. “PoliceAI will transform how every force in England and Wales works,” she said.
Interim director Alex Murray said the centre’s role would be to ensure AI is adopted responsibly across policing. “We have created a national AI centre to help policing work smarter – our job is to get responsible AI into the hands of officers and staff so that they can spend less time on bureaucracy and more time fighting crime,” he said.
The centre will be hosted by the College of Policing and is expected to become part of the planned National Policing Service. It will also publish a public register of AI tools used across policing and oversee testing designed to assess systems for accuracy and bias before deployment.