Taser Company Axon Is Selling AI That Turns Body Cam Audio Into Police Reports
Axon says its AI will help get more police out of the office and on the streets. Critics worry it’ll make cops lazy and potentially introduce errors into crucial evidence.
American cops are increasingly leaning on artificial intelligence to assist with policing, from AI models that analyze criminal patterns to drones that can fly themselves. Now, a GPT-4 powered AI can do one of their less appealing jobs: filing paperwork.
On Tuesday, Axon, the $22 billion police contractor best known for manufacturing the Taser electric weapon, launched a new tool called Draft One that it says can transcribe audio from body cameras and automatically turn it into a police report. Cops can then review the document to ensure accuracy, Axon CEO Rick Smith told Forbes. Axon claims one early tester of the tool, Fort Collins Colorado Police Department, has seen an 82% decrease in time spent writing reports. “If an officer spends half their day reporting, and we can cut that in half, we have an opportunity to potentially free up 25% of an officer's time to be back out policing,” Smith said.
These reports, though, are often used as evidence in criminal trials, and critics are concerned that relying on AI could put people at risk by depending on language models that are known to “hallucinate,” or make things up, as well as display racial bias, either blatantly or unconsciously.
