Scotland Yard is using AI tools supplied by the US tech company Palantir to monitor staff behaviour in an attempt to root out failing officers, the Guardian has learned.

The Metropolitan police has previously declined to confirm or deny whether it used technology supplied by the company, which also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump’s ICE operation. It has now confirmed that it is using Palantir’s AI to analyse internal data about sickness levels, absences from duty and overtime patterns in an effort to identify potential shortcomings in professional standards.

The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, criticised the approach as “automated suspicion”. It said: “Officers must not be subjected to opaque or untested tools that risk misinterpreting unsustainable workload pressures, sickness or overtime as indicators of wrongdoing.”

With 46,000 officers and staff, the Met is the UK’s largest police force and has faced a wave of controversies, ranging from failures to properly vet officers – highlighted by Wayne Couzens’ murder of Sarah Everard – to the toleration of discriminatory and misogynistic behaviour.

The force said: “There is evidence to suggest a correlation between significant levels of sickness, increased absences or unusually high overtime, and failings in standards, culture and behaviour.”

By bringing together data from multiple existing internal databases, the aim of the time-limited pilot of Palantir’s technology was to “help us identify these patterns of behaviour in our officers and staff” and was “part of our wider effort to drive up standards and improve the Met’s culture”.

It added: “Palantir’s systems help to identify the patterns, but it is officers who then explore further and make any determinations on standards, performance or other issues.”

A spokesperson for the Police Federation said: “Any system that profiles officers using algorithmic patterns must be treated with extreme caution. Policing already operates under some of the broadest and deepest scrutiny of any profession … If forces are serious about raising standards and public confidence, the focus must remain on proper supervision, fair processes and human judgment, not the automation of suspicion.”

Palantir has been caught up in the ongoing row over Peter Mandelson’s role as Keir Starmer’s ambassador to the US before he was sacked over his links to Jeffrey Epstein. A lobbying firm Mandelson co-owned, Global Counsel, works for Palantir, which was co-founded by the Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

Mandelson and Starmer visited Palantir’s technology showroom in Washington DC last year and met its chief executive, Alex Karp, shortly after Mandelson’s appointment. MPs have called for greater transparency over Palantir’s public sector contracts in the UK, including a £330m deal signed with the NHS in November 2023 to provide a federated data platform, and a £240m contract agreed with the Ministry of Defence in December 2025.

Responding to the Met’s Palantir pilot, Martin Wrigley MP, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons science, innovation and technology select committee, said: “I am concerned about the rights of officers as employees. Bosses spying on staff has been controversial even before some used AI to do so. Palantir seems to be watching over every aspect of government. Who is watching Palantir?”

Palantir’s AI is already available for use by several other police to assist investigations as part of services provided through two regional investigations units.

Labour said in its policing white paper last month that it was “committed to supporting the police to adopt AI responsibly, at pace and scale”. The party plans to invest more than £115m over the next three years “to support the rapid and responsible development, testing and rollout of AI tools across all 43 forces in England and Wales”.

A spokesperson for Palantir said: “We are proud that our software is being used to deliver better public services in the UK. That includes improving police operations, delivering more NHS operations, helping Royal Navy ships to stay at sea for longer.”