United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Serious Fraud Office
AI-assisted document review and technology assisted review, supplied by OpenText (Axcelerate, per the SFO's 2018 announcement)
OperationalOfficial publicationPAI-82967B3C
- Body
- Serious Fraud Office
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Area
- United Kingdom
- Technology
- AI-assisted document review and technology assisted review
- Supplier
- OpenText (Axcelerate, per the SFO's 2018 announcement)
- Status
- Operational
In routine use by the named body, on the evidence of a public source. - Stage
- In use now
- Since
- April 2018
- Legal basis
- Not stated in the source
- Oversight
- Not stated in the source
- Evidence
- Official publication
Police force, government department or public body publication - Source
- SFO Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26; SFO news release, 10 April 2018
- Last checked
- Record code
PAI-82967B3C
Notes
The Serious Fraud Office announced on 10 April 2018 that it had adopted Axcelerate, "a new AI powered document review system from OpenText", after using it in the Rolls-Royce investigation, in which the company provided an estimated 30 million documents, and that a pilot "robot" had been used to scan for legally privileged material; it said artificial intelligence "is made available to all of its new casework from this month". The SFO Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26 says the office "continued to develop our use of Technology Assisted Review", set up an internal AI Steering Group to increase its AI capabilities, and is exploring opportunities such as a general-purpose AI tool for non-operational use and pilots of potential operational AI use cases. The annual report does not name Axcelerate or OpenText. It describes a continuing review of current and former e-discovery software and a separate issue, found in late November 2025, with the legacy Autonomy e-discovery system, which the SFO believes may have affected about 20 cases. Neither source says whether the 2018 product is still in use.
AI-assisted document review and technology assisted review elsewhere in United Kingdom
See them in the tracker| Deployment | Country | Supplier | Since | Status | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Swansea UniversityDRAGON-Spotter (AI linguistic detection of online grooming in seized-device chat logs) | United KingdomSwansea | — | — | In development |