FOI 748-2025 / Jul 2025 / AI images
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 748-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 23rd July 2025 as follows:
Please can you provide me with the total number of offences recorded by police, broken down by month, since January 2024, of the following offences below. I’m specifically interested in those offences below relating to artificial intelligence usage, so I would like a breakdown to only include those offences which mention “AI”, “artificial intelligence” or “deep fake” or “deepfake” in the crime MO notes – NB: if the force already has its own AI flag, please use that instead of the keyword search.
For each month since and including January 2023, up to the latest month available, could I have the AI-related offences (as classified using the above search terms):
Q1. Under Section 66b The Sexual Offences Act 2003 (the offence of sharing or threatening to share an intimate photograph or film of, or appearing to be of, someone - colloquially known as ‘revenge pornography’
Q2. Under Section 66 E-F The Sexual Offences Act 2003 (the offence of creating purported intimate image of adult or Requesting the creation of purported intimate image of adult - basically the creation of revenge pornography)
Q3. Under Section 1a Protection of Children Act 1978 (creating sexually explicit images / pseudo images of a child)
Q4. Under Section 1b Protection of Children Act 1978 (to distribute or show such indecent photographs)
Q5. Under Section 1c Protection of Children Act 1978 (to possess such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs)
I would be grateful if you could provide the information requested in a spreadsheet readable format (e.g. an attached xlsx or csv file), rather than a pdf file. For an example of the format of the response I am looking for please see the table below (I’ve put in dummy data):
|
Offence |
Jan 2024 |
Feb 2024 |
Mar 2024 |
Apr 2024 |
May 2024 |
Jun 2024 |
|
Section 66b The Sexual Offences Act 2003 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Section 66 E-F The Sexual Offences Act 2003 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Section 1a Protection of Children Act 1978 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Section 1b Protection of Children Act 1978 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Section 1c Protection of Children Act 1978 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that searches cannot be undertaken to identify offences recorded within the Crime Recording System by using the above legislation. Therefore, having reviewed the Home Office Notifiable Offences list, the legislation detailed in your request has been interpreted by the business area to refer to the following Home Office Offences:
- 088/15 - Sharing intimate photograph or film to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, or for sexual gratification. Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 66B, (2) (3) and (10)
- 088/15 - Threaten to share intimate photograph or film. Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 66B (4) (10))
- 175/08 - Share photograph or film of person in intimate state without consent. Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 66B (1) and (9)
- 086/02 - Take/ make / distribute indecent photographs or pseudo- photographs, of children*. Protection of Children Act 1978 Secs 1 & 6 as amended by the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act 1994 Sec 84 and Sexual Offences Act 2003
*This is one offence that covers taking, making and distributing.
Searches of the Crime Recording System were therefore conducted for the above offences, recorded between 1st January 2024 and 30th June 2025, where the stated keywords appear within the MO Description / Incident Summary field. It is important to note that, in the event there are further relevant offences recorded, but where the requested keywords are not present within the MO Description/Incident Summary, then these will not have been returned within the search. For this reason, information retrieved by way of a keyword search cannot be considered to be entirely reliable.
Please note that the requested monthly breakdown is being withheld from disclosure by virtue of the following exemption:
Section 40(2) Personal Information
Section 40 is an absolute class-based exemption, which does not require evidence of the harm disclosure would cause and does not require consideration of a public interest test. That being said, where Section 40(2) is engaged, in order to make the exemption absolute there needs to be evidence that a Data Protection Principle would be breached by disclosure.
This exemption is engaged where disclosure of information relates to personal data of a third party or could lead to the identification of an individual, either from that information alone or combined with any other information from within the Police Service or public domain.
In this case, due to very low numbers, providing an additional layer of information in the form of the requested monthly breakdown, is likely to lead to the identification of an individual. Such a disclosure would breach individuals’ rights under the Data Protection Act 2018, in particular Article 5(1) of the GDPR, which states that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
This letter serves as a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act for the monthly breakdown. Please see the information I am able to provide set out below.
|
Offence |
2024 |
2025 |
Total |
|
088/15 - Sharing intimate photograph or film to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, or for sexual gratification |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
088/15 - Threaten to share intimate photograph or film |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
175/08 - Share photograph or film of person in intimate state without consent |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
086/02 - Take/ make / distribute indecent photographs or pseudo- photographs, of children |
4 |
1 |
5 |
|
Grand Total |
4 |
1 |
5 |
Please note that the numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible; however, the data is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system that relies on manual input, therefore care should be taken to ensure data collection processes, and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting the data.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB