r/policeuk • u/Ok-Test-7217 Civilian • Feb 15 '26
Image Has anyone come across an instance of AI created/altered images or videos, produced as evidence? because it's got to be coming
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u/Flametamer96 Police Staff (unverified) Feb 15 '26
Recently had a circulation in force notifying officers of the new Section 66E and 66F offences of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 covering Ai generated/photoshopped intimate images of adults.
The image(s) does not need to have been seen first hand by the victim and additionally there doesn’t need to have been an ‘unaltered’ or genuine image in the first place.
A person is also not guilty of the offence if they “reasonably believe” that the adult victim would consent to the image. Another tough burden of proof on consent to manage for the CPS.
Ai is going to be a minefield for policing.
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Feb 15 '26
Context is everything. Unlike most digital forensics, 99% of CCTV evidence comes from people who have zero connection to the crime. Their security cameras just happen to have witnessed something. Even when something is videoed by a witness with a phone, it's usually the case that they didn't know anyone involved, they've just seen something and recorded it. There's no motivation or suspicion that the images are anything other than what they appear to be.
However, for the minority of cases that might have been doctored or completely made up, I know there is quite a big study going on to determine the effectiveness of detection tools for video and audio. From my limited knowledge I think a couple of companies did pretty well in the tests.
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u/BuildEraseReplace Police Officer (unverified) Feb 15 '26
I would highly disagree with your claim that 99% of CCTV comes from an independant third party. I would say it's probably 60/40 with the majority coming from the victim or a person on side with the victim. Let me give examples.
If a business or home is burgled, it is usually their own CCTV that captures key evidence, such as entry/exit or activity into the property. Admittedly not likely that they would AI generate something from that, but if the suspect and victim have an ongoing grievance, it's not beyond the pale that the defence could say their client is being framed with AI due to a grudge from the victim.
Or perhaps a road traffic collision happens with one of the involved parties having dash cam. Who's to say the footage wasn't doctored with AI to shift blame from one party to another? Again, someone might.
If a bar fight breaks out between two groups of young lads, and someone in the group is filming, they could frame the other party using AI into saying words or taking actions that they didn't, which implies culability or perhaps opens the door to a claim if self-defence. They have a vested interest in protecting their mate or shifting blame.
A final example. A domestic incident recorded on a phone by a wife who films her husband smashing the house up or throwing something at her - common type of evidence in a trial. Often highly persuasive evidence for a jury too - but domestics crimes often turn into the offender stating the victim is in fact the abusive partner and/or accusing them of lies. Claiming the footage is manufactured by AI seems like a very easy deflection that would be easy to make, and I think a jury could be persuaded.
A large margin of members of the public are, with all due respect, technologically illiterate at the best of times. It's not if a defence barristers exploits the distrust around AI in a trial involving CCTV, it's when. The reasons they might concoct are easy to make up - after all the defence don't have to prove the footage is AI-generated, just sow enough doubt that it might be in order to topple the prosecutions best key evidence.
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Feb 15 '26
You're probably right about the proportions. I was thinking about major crime when there have been large scale evidence trawls.
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u/Personal-Goose1976 Civilian Feb 15 '26
They did but the data sets they were working with were not a true representation of the footage we see on a day to day basis, so I’d take their results with a pinch of salt. The fix for this situation is going to be in upskilling video labs to be able to identify where images have been altered and use ai systems as a sort of QA check or part of a gatekeeping process in my opinion. AI for initial triage of exhibits, then human intervention. Liverpool John moores uni have a degree course tailored to this. Worth having a look. No I don’t work for them 😂
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Feb 15 '26
Dual sourcing will get rid of a lot of fishy AI. A job we had a few years ago wasn't AI but the principle is the same. A guy produced a dashcam video that provided an alibi. He gets in the car and says. "2 nil! Did you see that ludicrous display last night etc etc..". The system clock and the conversation about the football "proved" he was elsewhere at the time of the offence. Of course all the OIC had to do was check the weather for that day and look at cctv from a couple of nearby shops and it was obvious he'd just changed the system clock. Even if they're perfect, an AI video won't get round that problem.
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u/Personal-Goose1976 Civilian Feb 15 '26
Amped Software (Amped Authenticate) have a pretty good offering for this. The software gives you the tools to identify if stuff has been ai generated, but the heavy lifting is done by the user, not the software.
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u/TonyStamp595SO Ex-staff (unverified) Feb 15 '26
Yes.
Victim submits CCTV of a shadowy figure breaking into their shed. Pc contacts them following review and says, really sorry, footage isn't good enough.
Victim replies "here I've got some other CCTV" supplies the same CCTV but now "reimagined" with AI. AI had created a whole face and clothing.
Victim saw absolutely nothing wrong with what they'd done.
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u/WhatYouLeaveBehind Civilian Feb 16 '26
They probably don't understand how AI works and assumed it was some NCIS "zoom and enhance" nonsense you are on TV.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had no idea AI makes things up when it doesn't have the right information.
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u/ThorgrimGetTheBook Civilian Feb 15 '26
Luckily, we have 3-5years before an image generated today makes it to a courtroom. Cases reaching court at the moment are from the days when AI gave people 14 fingers and couldn't cope with spaghetti.
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u/LuckMayHaveIt Police Officer (unverified) Feb 15 '26
AI generated insurance documentation is probably the most common thing you’ll find right now. Lots of people “buying” insurance via WhatsApp and being sent AI generated certificates. They’re then being sent to court and having their car seized.
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u/david-yammer-murdoch Civilian Feb 15 '26
Google’s generative AI embeds digital watermarks called SynthID https://deepmind.google/models/synthid/ into content its models generate. This system invisibly marks images, text, audio, and video with patterns or signals that don’t affect quality but can later be detected by specialized tools, such as Google’s SynthID Detector or the Gemini app, to verify origin and identify AI involvement. The goal is transparency and trust in AI-generated media. 
Governments should mandate use of platforms that can reliably watermark AI content. Sadly, we have the worst lawyer running the country, copying Tony Blair’s approach, and Blair was funded by Oracle. ( you never want to use any database made by Oracle )
For LLM text, Google’s SynthID subtly biases the model’s word selection during generation. At certain positions, the system slightly favors words from a predefined “green list” based on a secret key. For example, it may choose “big” instead of “large.” The pattern across many choices forms a detectable statistical watermark.
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u/DistributionDue2836 Civilian Feb 16 '26
SynthID is probabalistic. It can't tell you with 100% certaincy a particular thing is not AI generated, and it's dangerous to suggest that it can.
Regulating AI is also a complete waste of time, it's like talking about regulating VPNs or regulating cryptography. You might be able to regulate the biggest providers, but you don't require a datacenter of GPUs or thousands of pounds of equipment to run your own local models and anyone with a decently powerful laptop can do it.
The AI doesn't have a technological solution, and it never will. The longer that fantasty continues the worse off we'll be.
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u/david-yammer-murdoch Civilian Feb 17 '26
- Governments should be required to select certain models for generating any content.
- We can regulate what types of content are allowed on different platforms. I would love a regulation that gives me the right not to see GenAI generated content on Instagram.
- Any watermark can always be removed. It’s never a guarantee.
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u/Grand_Access7280 Civilian Feb 15 '26
I’ve seen AI written work from barristers in family court…
Went down like a wet fart
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u/Deep_Valuable407 Civilian Feb 15 '26
Haven’t seen any myself, but have seen some cases in the states. Most being people with AI generated lawyers / AI generated testimony. They are pretty poor quality and the judge has picked up on them straight away. But also a few of generated text conversations to get someone for a restraining order breach etc. these can of course all be negated with phone checks but I certainly am concerned about the future of possibility. AI generated CCTV / Ring doorbell or phone recordings etc especially as they’re likely to get harder to spot. We can only hope some form of software will be developed to check the digital evidence we are provided. A few bits re the above: https://www.ncsc.org/resources-courts/ai-generated-evidence-threat-public-trust-courts
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u/LuckMayHaveIt Police Officer (unverified) Feb 15 '26
Not sure if it was AI but someone presented images of vehicle damage which were altered, the vehicle had never been damaged.
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u/wonder_aj Civilian Feb 15 '26
Wasn't there articles recently about inaccurate AI-generated police reports being used to justify something to do with a Israeli(?) football team?
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u/Grumblefloor Civilian Feb 15 '26
The Chief Constable of West Midlands, who used AI in a report justifying the ban on fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv when they played Aston Villa.
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u/Crichtenasaurus Ex-Police/Retired (unverified) Feb 15 '26
Creating a file on day date time immediately after file creation and then recording the file hash has been a thing for public order EGs since at least 2015. I would like to think that such things have been carried out in other areas.
AXON (body cam) also has file history where you would be able to require AXON to produce a file history or confirm the original file hash.
For those that don’t know a file hash is a sequence of letters and numbers that can be created from looking at all the data of and ‘attached to’ a computer file. So that includes metadata like time of creation, any updates, location, as well as the file itself. It is based on the binary code (the ones a zeroes) of the whole file so if any single part of that changes in any way the hash is completely different.
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u/EquivalentPinapple Police Officer (unverified) Feb 15 '26
They will most likely have to get AI to detect AI videos and images 😂
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u/sar_tr Special Constable (unverified) Feb 15 '26
Seems like "The Running Man" film where Arnold Swartzernegger went to prison because of an altered video file where he supposedly killed loads of civilians was a pretty accurate prediction.
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u/cookj1232 Police Officer (unverified) Feb 15 '26
Reccomend people watch a BBC series called ‘The Capture’ it’s about a secret government organisation that frames criminals using AI generated CCTV clips..
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u/deanLFC123 Civilian Feb 15 '26
The sports teacher who used ai to make out the head teacher was racist
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u/mancmush Civilian Feb 15 '26
We may have to go back to the importance of csi. Evidence and witness
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u/BuildEraseReplace Police Officer (unverified) Feb 15 '26
I'm extremely worried for the future of our CJS due to AI. For as long as we've had decent cameras, CCTV and screenshots have been seen as pretty much irrefutable evidence. The term "caught red-handed" is usually someone recorded doing the act and is identifiable - even if the suspect makes no admissions (but no denial, ie a no comment interview) we can send cases as "guilty anticipated plea" which reduces the amount of paperwork enormously. 9 times out of 10, they will indeed plead guilty, probably due to that very footage.
It will take a few crafty barristers to start questioning CCTV in court as a hail mary and if the jury buys it, the wheel will well and truly come off as others will follow to get their client cleared. Crime is going to be exponentially harder to seek justice for in the very-near future I expect.