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GenAI at HM Inspectorate of Probation

Published:

HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to using generative AI (GenAI) responsibly and to ensuring that all GenAI-related policy and tools reflect and uphold our core values of integrity, independence, fairness, and transparency.

To support this, we will:

  • Always use generative AI in accordance with the latest official government guidance, in addition to the latest regulations and legislations in the UK.
  • Act responsibly in our use of GenAI by operating consistently in line with our values, including the Civil Service Code.
  • Develop and undertake training on responsible use of GenAI, in particular around ensuring accuracy, inclusivity, and mitigating biases.
  • Ensure our use of GenAI remains factual – not creating content that misleads, in addition to not altering or changing existing digital content in a way that removes or replaces its original meaning or messaging.
  • Engage with appropriate government organisations, strategic suppliers, technology providers, and the wider Justice sector around significant developments in GenAI, and the implications for our use.
  • Continue to review reputable research into the public’s attitudes towards GenAI and developments in AI capabilities and consider how our policies should evolve in response.

Across the Inspectorate, GenAI is used to help with tasks such as, but not limited to:

  • Generating text, audio and video, including emails, reports, and presentations
  • Improving written clarity
  • Transcribing and summarising meetings (with appropriate consent)
  • Brainstorming and ideation.

Across the Inspectorate, GenAI is not used as the sole or primary mechanism to:

  • Formulate or replace strategic decision-making
  • Conduct analytical assessments from which inspection conclusions are drawn
  • Make professional judgements in relation to case assessment
  • Make decisions relating to people or resources without clear human oversight and accountability (e.g. recruitment processes).

The approved GenAI tools we utilise are:

  • Microsoft Copilot Web – available to all staff for drafting, summarisation, information retrieval and evidence searching.
  • Microsoft Copilot 365 – integrated within Office applications for selected use cases.
  • Chat GPT Enterprise – an MoJ-approved, secure version of ChatGPT hosted in a protected environment. This is not the publicly available ChatGPT platform.

HM Inspectorate of Probation is at the beginning of its AI journey and will continue to explore how this technology can be safely leveraged to support more complex tasks over time. Professional judgement will always remain central to our work, ensuring that inspection findings, conclusions, and decisions are made through informed human analysis.

March 2026