4 ms·

The headline evokes ideas of creating a video of a suspect perpetrating the crime but what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance

The headline evokes ideas of creating a video of a suspect perpetrating the crime but what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it. Since “enhancing” is letting AI fill in the gaps it would be using AI to “create evidence”. Regardless of what they did, tampering with evidence is completely unacceptable and should result in their dismissal and conviction but I don’t think the story will transpire to be as attention grabbing. A well meaning idiot could convince themselves that enhancing evidence is somehow justifiable whereas it would be almost impossible for even the most corrupt moron to justify creating evidence out of thin air. Creating evidence out of thin air would be ridiculous because evidence is available to the defence who would be able to immediately identify if an image or video had been created (as the defendant would be able to recognize what they do or did not do) whereas “enhancing” an image could be easily spotted by other officers. “How come this photo is clearer than the last time I saw it?” “Oh I ran it through ChatGPT to clean it up! Neat, eh? Just like on CSI!”

Chinjut 4mo ago
Yes, let's please give police officers the copious (cop-ious?) benefit of the doubt they have earnt.
- daveshistory 4mo ago
  Honestly, I didn't tell it to add that gun to the picture, it did that on its own!
- Quarrelsome 4mo ago
  you're quite right, every single one of them is actively trying to kill each and every one of us. To consider any other possibility would be hysterical.
  - hiddencost 4mo ago
    ... Police in the united states have more than a century of flagrant misconduct under their belts. They protect their own, they almost never face consequences for killing people, they are frequently corrupt, they are frequently biased. Here's a couple fun examples: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2026-06-05/boston-law-enforcement-experts-call-vulgar-texts-revealed-in-karen-read-lawsuit-appalling https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2026-06-05/boston-law-enforc... https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/la-is-investigating-50-year-old-police-gangs-finally-2022-03-30/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/la-is-investigating...
    - dofm 4mo ago
      To be fair, this is Derbyshire in England. They are often a bit overkeen but they are not exactly Homan Square. I think there have been less than two dozen police involved killings in the whole of the UK in the last six years, and that's in a population of seventy million people. It's about 2% of the equivalent US figure (which averages 800 per year in 340 million people)
      - simulator5g 4mo ago
        It doesn't make much difference if you perform similar practices in a different country. UK police are just like American police.
        BellsOnSunday 4mo ago
        Apart from the bit about killing people, for the most part.
        Quarrelsome 4mo ago
        who are exactly the same as the Russki police, right? Bloody hell...
    - Quarrelsome 4mo ago
      This is the UK, our cops don't even carry guns.
  - cwmoore 4mo ago
    I see what you did there[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis
Jensson 4mo ago
> what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it Doesn't iphones do this by default? The camera isn't actually that sharp, instead it fills in the details so it looks sharp, and sometimes it adds things that were never there. Can easily see it adding a gun in a blurry photo of someone. So almost everyone uses AI to forge evidence then.
- jshier 4mo ago
  iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera. There were Android phones doing this (famously I think it was Samsung where it would replace images of the moon with a different image of the moon), and the Photos app has AI manipulation features. And most of the time, Apple's noise removal algorithm actually removes detail from images, most notably making text and straight lines wobbly.
  - Jensson 4mo ago
    > iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera This is AI. Its not generative AI if that is what you mean, but it is AI altering the image and adding things that wasn't there, usually its fine sometimes it fails horribly and make the picture totally different. https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476351601862483968 https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476351601862483968
    - moonu 4mo ago
      https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476951534160257026?s=20 https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476951534160257026?s=20 The replies explain that it was a leaf obscuring the face
      - Jensson 4mo ago
        But it used AI to stitch that onto the body, a raw camera shot wouldn't look like that.
thatguy0900 4mo ago
There is a tremendous amount of cases you can look up where cops wholesale fabricate evidence. Why wouldn't they use chatgpt to do it as well?
kubb 4mo ago
It matters little what you think, if that’s not what happened.
xorcist 4mo ago
That is a lot of words just to say "fabricating evidence".
- cwmoore 4mo ago
  Their word is evidence and their employer is the prosecution. This is the fabric of prosperity.
  - dofm 4mo ago
    FWIW their employer is not the prosecution. UK police don't prosecute cases, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) does. The word of a police officer, in UK law, is that of any other witness. There is a kind of presumption of regularity in the courts, but they don't have any sense of qualified immunity; they are generally but not universally considered not personally liable for negligence but that is not guaranteed them. And unlike police departments in the USA they don't really have much latitude to experiment with technology. IMO they should be banned from using AI tools that aren't centrally provided. Other than that, yes — I agree with your general view that this is an alarming state of affairs for people in a position of trust.
- strken 4mo ago
  If we want to solve a problem, intent matters.
- totetsu 4mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBkWtDAPBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBkWtDAPBY De-crop
inigyou 4mo ago
What would the defense do with fabricated evidence? Say that evidence is fabricated? Okay, the prosecution will say it's not fabricated, now what?
- jojomodding 4mo ago
  The judge will decide if the evidence is admissible or not.
nullc 4mo ago
> but what I think is much more likely My mind went straight to using the AI to write a statement and the AI made stuff up, which would be a nearly guaranteed outcome from using existing LLMs for that task, and it's exactly the sort of thing that I'm sure many officers are doing ... and it could go a fair time before it was discovered.
tsss 4mo ago
If you think the police don't fabricate evidence on the regular, simply because their hunch doesn't match the fact or because they don't like the suspect, then you are way too gullible. Back in the day they just planted a baggie of drugs on you.
- justin66 4mo ago
  > Back in the day they just planted a baggie of drugs on you. Thank god that never happens anymore. I'm sure the bodycam era has ended all of that misbehavior and one could not possibly go to YouTube and find videos of cops in possession of that unique blend of corruption and stupidity that would lead them to plant drugs while being recorded. Ahem.
themafia 4mo ago
> it would be almost impossible for even the most corrupt moron to justify creating evidence out of thin air. Yet we have many examples of this precise thing happening. This is because the police carry immense credibility when testifying. This is also why the "Brady List" exists. > the defence who would be able to immediately identify if an image or video had been created How? Just pure skill? Again, we can see from appeals court proceedings, they miss details all the time. The system of "public defense" in the United States is severely lacking.

Chinjut 4mo ago

Yes, let's please give police officers the copious (cop-ious?) benefit of the doubt they have earnt.

daveshistory 4mo ago
Honestly, I didn't tell it to add that gun to the picture, it did that on its own!
Quarrelsome 4mo ago
you're quite right, every single one of them is actively trying to kill each and every one of us. To consider any other possibility would be hysterical.
- hiddencost 4mo ago
  ... Police in the united states have more than a century of flagrant misconduct under their belts. They protect their own, they almost never face consequences for killing people, they are frequently corrupt, they are frequently biased. Here's a couple fun examples: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2026-06-05/boston-law-enforcement-experts-call-vulgar-texts-revealed-in-karen-read-lawsuit-appalling https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2026-06-05/boston-law-enforc... https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/la-is-investigating-50-year-old-police-gangs-finally-2022-03-30/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/la-is-investigating...
  - dofm 4mo ago
    To be fair, this is Derbyshire in England. They are often a bit overkeen but they are not exactly Homan Square. I think there have been less than two dozen police involved killings in the whole of the UK in the last six years, and that's in a population of seventy million people. It's about 2% of the equivalent US figure (which averages 800 per year in 340 million people)
    - simulator5g 4mo ago
      It doesn't make much difference if you perform similar practices in a different country. UK police are just like American police.
      - BellsOnSunday 4mo ago
        Apart from the bit about killing people, for the most part.
      - Quarrelsome 4mo ago
        who are exactly the same as the Russki police, right? Bloody hell...
  - Quarrelsome 4mo ago
    This is the UK, our cops don't even carry guns.
- cwmoore 4mo ago
  I see what you did there[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis

Jensson 4mo ago

> what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it Doesn't iphones do this by default? The camera isn't actually that sharp, instead it fills in the details so it looks sharp, and sometimes it adds things that were never there. Can easily see it adding a gun in a blurry photo of someone. So almost everyone uses AI to forge evidence then.

jshier 4mo ago
iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera. There were Android phones doing this (famously I think it was Samsung where it would replace images of the moon with a different image of the moon), and the Photos app has AI manipulation features. And most of the time, Apple's noise removal algorithm actually removes detail from images, most notably making text and straight lines wobbly.
- Jensson 4mo ago
  > iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera This is AI. Its not generative AI if that is what you mean, but it is AI altering the image and adding things that wasn't there, usually its fine sometimes it fails horribly and make the picture totally different. https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476351601862483968 https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476351601862483968
  - moonu 4mo ago
    https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476951534160257026?s=20 https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476951534160257026?s=20 The replies explain that it was a leaf obscuring the face
    - Jensson 4mo ago
      But it used AI to stitch that onto the body, a raw camera shot wouldn't look like that.

thatguy0900 4mo ago

There is a tremendous amount of cases you can look up where cops wholesale fabricate evidence. Why wouldn't they use chatgpt to do it as well?

kubb 4mo ago

It matters little what you think, if that’s not what happened.

xorcist 4mo ago

That is a lot of words just to say "fabricating evidence".

cwmoore 4mo ago
Their word is evidence and their employer is the prosecution. This is the fabric of prosperity.
- dofm 4mo ago
  FWIW their employer is not the prosecution. UK police don't prosecute cases, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) does. The word of a police officer, in UK law, is that of any other witness. There is a kind of presumption of regularity in the courts, but they don't have any sense of qualified immunity; they are generally but not universally considered not personally liable for negligence but that is not guaranteed them. And unlike police departments in the USA they don't really have much latitude to experiment with technology. IMO they should be banned from using AI tools that aren't centrally provided. Other than that, yes — I agree with your general view that this is an alarming state of affairs for people in a position of trust.
strken 4mo ago
If we want to solve a problem, intent matters.
totetsu 4mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBkWtDAPBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBkWtDAPBY De-crop

inigyou 4mo ago

What would the defense do with fabricated evidence? Say that evidence is fabricated? Okay, the prosecution will say it's not fabricated, now what?

jojomodding 4mo ago
The judge will decide if the evidence is admissible or not.

nullc 4mo ago

> but what I think is much more likely My mind went straight to using the AI to write a statement and the AI made stuff up, which would be a nearly guaranteed outcome from using existing LLMs for that task, and it's exactly the sort of thing that I'm sure many officers are doing ... and it could go a fair time before it was discovered.

tsss 4mo ago

If you think the police don't fabricate evidence on the regular, simply because their hunch doesn't match the fact or because they don't like the suspect, then you are way too gullible. Back in the day they just planted a baggie of drugs on you.

justin66 4mo ago
> Back in the day they just planted a baggie of drugs on you. Thank god that never happens anymore. I'm sure the bodycam era has ended all of that misbehavior and one could not possibly go to YouTube and find videos of cops in possession of that unique blend of corruption and stupidity that would lead them to plant drugs while being recorded. Ahem.

themafia 4mo ago

> it would be almost impossible for even the most corrupt moron to justify creating evidence out of thin air. Yet we have many examples of this precise thing happening. This is because the police carry immense credibility when testifying. This is also why the "Brady List" exists. > the defence who would be able to immediately identify if an image or video had been created How? Just pure skill? Again, we can see from appeals court proceedings, they miss details all the time. The system of "public defense" in the United States is severely lacking.