Guildford blamed ‘social media scraping’ and Google for reference to non-existent gamepublished at 09:43 GMT
09:43 GMT
Image source, House of Commons/PA Wire
Craig Guildford was first asked by MPs about the West Ham game – which never existed – on 1 December., external
He told them: “Within my narrative, which I have compiled over the weekend, the
one assertion in relation to West Ham is completely wrong.
“I am told that
is a result of some social media scraping that was done, and that is wrong.
That was one element in a document that was eight or nine pages long,
but we stand by the key tenets in the document.”
He was then asked by Paul Kohler MP: “Hold on—so you did an AI search, got something about West
Ham and just whacked it into the…”
Guildford replied: “No, not at all. We do a very comprehensive
assessment.”
On 6 January, Guildford again denied that AI had been used.
“There was a definite note that
we have got to the bottom of in terms of the West Ham game.
“The
summation in the House—it was a question that was asked in the
House—was that West Midlands Police may have used AI on this
particular occasion. We do not use AI.
“On the West Ham side of things and how we gained that information, in
producing the report, one of the officers would usually go to… a system, which football officers use all over
the country, that has intelligence reports of previous games.
“They did not
find any relevant information within the searches that they made for that.
They basically Googled when the last time was. That is how the
information came to be.”
Chair Karen Bradley asked: “Was it the AI function on Google?”
Guildford replied: “I am being really candid here. I am told
that they just did a Google search on that because they could not find it
in the normal system.”