Ms Watson said problems arise when the technology quotes legislation that does not exist in England and Wales (PA)
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AI is thought to be fuelling a rise in the number of people asking a watchdog to review complaints made about the police, as well as applying for judicial reviews of its own decisions.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) received 3,051 requests to review the outcome of complaints made to police forces in 2025/26, up a quarter (24.3%) on the previous year.
Investigators spot technology-aided applications because of their similar layouts, content, and sometimes quoting legislation that does not exist in England and Wales.
The proportion of requests upheld has gradually decreased from 39.5% in 2022/23, to 26.8% in 2025/26.
The body has also seen a rise in the number of requests for it to call in cases for investigation, or for judicial reviews of its decisions, which is also being put partly down to members of the public using AI.
The IOPC said that in 2025/26, at least a quarter of requests for judicial review were “likely to have had AI help”.
Director general of the IOPC Rachel Watson told the Press Association: “We do see more AI-generated complaints, people use AI to help them make a complaint.
“In a way, that’s a good thing, because maybe people didn’t feel able to before, maybe they’d have felt too nervous, maybe this could well be enabling people who couldn’t otherwise engage with the system, so I don’t want to say it’s a bad thing.
“But it does actually generate work, and when AI invents legislation as part of the complaint that gets more complicated.”
The watchdog is gearing up for major changes to policing this year, including moves to raise the threshold for police officers to face criminal prosecution for use of force, expected to be set out by the Home Office next month.
As well as the high profile case of Police Sergeant Martyn Blake, who shot London gang member Chris Kaba in 2022, the change is expected to affect dozens more cases across England and Wales.
The Government is also set to consult on plans to raise the threshold for unlawful killing verdicts at inquests, which currently set unreasonable expectations for bereaved families, Ms Watson said.
“It’s relatively low for unlawful killing to be found, and that can create an expectation that there’ll be then a criminal or civil outcome, but that doesn’t necessarily follow from an inquest decision, and that creates expectation, that the system then isn’t meeting for families and for the bereaved.”
The IOPC received a record total number of referrals from police forces in England and Wales in 2025/26, 7,088, the highest annual total since the body was established in 2018.
It launched its own independent investigations into 316 of the cases, but Ms Watson would like to see this double to 500 or 600.
She also wants to see an overhaul of the police conduct system, which she says is not fit for purpose, and fewer officers brought before misconduct panels where they could instead be dealt with by internal learning processes.
Frontline officers “in the heat of the moment, under extreme pressure” may breach conduct standards, and then face a months-long investigation followed by months longer waiting for a disciplinary hearing.
“There’s no place in uniform for officers who were really negligent, who don’t take their responsibility seriously, who are corrupt, but in many cases it’s an officer who was well intentioned and things went wrong, and in those cases greater flexibility to move more quickly to performance, to support, and to improvement would be really helpful,” she told the Press Association.
“By rebalancing where conduct finishes and performance starts, I think we could move to a better service for the people who are at the wrong end of police experience as well, because they could more quickly get an apology and understand what learning there is for the police force.
“I think most people who complain, who’ve had a bad experience, they’d really just want it not to happen again, want it not to happen to others, and a many months long investigation followed by a conduct hearing that may well then find actually ‘nothing to see here’, doesn’t give them that.”
The IOPC also wants to look at ways to speed up investigations, including running misconduct proceedings before criminal trials to save time.
Ms Watson called misconduct processes “massively clunky”, with more paperwork than a criminal trial.
“The concern is always about prejudicing the outcome of a trial, and of course, at the moment we have criminal trials running but they’re being scheduled for 2030 in some cases now, which means we can’t wait.
“So we’re looking quite actively at what our risk appetite is for having conduct hearings in advance of criminal proceedings.”
The watchdog chief also believes some supervising officers have been too tolerant of misbehaviour and should take firmer action to nip bad behaviour in the bud at the early stages of a recruit’s career.
“It comes down to frontline supervision, and making sure that behaviours that aren’t appropriate are relentlessly called out, and it’s a ‘one strike and you’re out’ policy.
“When someone is new they can be dismissed a lot more swiftly, and I think there is, in some cases, too high a tolerance for people saying, ‘oh, well, maybe that’s a joke’, for inappropriate language, inappropriate behaviour.
“if it’s been made very clear at the early stages that’s not OK, then that individual will either leave, because it’s not a comfortable place for them, or they’ll be forced to leave.”
