Police have begun using AI to write incident reports
Some police officers have begun using generative artificial intelligence to write their reports, concerning watchdogs and delighting the officers saved from the tedious office work, the Associated Press reported this week.
Axon, a company mostly known for its body cameras and Taser product line, announced Draft One last April. The software, which draws information from body camera audio recordings, is already being used by officers in Oklahoma City; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Lafayette, Indiana, the AP reported. Competitors Policereports.ai and Truleo offer similar products.
According to the Axon website, police officers spend 40% of their time writing reports. Draft One — which uses the same large language model as OpenAI’s ChatGPT — and competing products promise to eliminate that work, leaving officers only to read the generated reports and click a box indicating their accuracy.
According to the AP, Oklahoma City police only use the tool to write reports on minor incidents in which no one is arrested. But other departments, including in Fort Collins and Lafayette, reported using the tool to draft reports for all types of incidents.
In addition to concerns that the tool could amplify biases or get facts wrong, Axon’s own chief executive told the AP that district attorneys have reported concerns of officers using the tool and then later claiming they didn’t write their reports, in an attempt to evade responsibility during legal investigations.
Report drafting is only the latest AI-powered function to hit police departments. Artificial intelligence in law enforcement has been a hotly debated topic for years, the technology having already found its way into gunshot detectors, facial recognition systems and predictive analytics software.
