Writing an incident report can be extremely time-consuming for police officers. Now, with the advancement of artificial intelligence, officers are starting to use AI chatbots to turn the hours-long task into one that takes only seconds.
Several companies, including Axon, the maker of the taser, developed a program that uses the audio from an officer's body camera and turns it into a narrative.
Thaddeus Johnson, assistant professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University and former police officer, says that it's a time-saver for police departments that are already stretched thin.
"Our response times can take longer the longer we're tied up in reports, and these reports are so important because they provide the fundamental basis for criminal court cases," Johnson said.
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Johnson said the technology also helps officers disclose things they may not remember.
"There's been times that I've forgotten about things that happened during the incident. You have auditory exclusion. You have tunnel vision," Johnson said.
But using software to document police encounters also raises certain concerns. Even though the officer can edit the report before it's submitted, the language algorithm could misinterpret the meaning or context of the dialogue on the body cam.
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A blog post on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website, a nonprofit digital rights group, addresses what the writer saw as concerns with the technology, saying, "Integrating AI into narratives of police encounters might make an already complicated system even more ripe for abuse."
Axon says it has put safeguards in place for bias and accuracy.
Currently, the Oklahoma City Police Department, which is experimenting with the technology for incident reports, said it only uses the technology for "minor incident reports that don't lead to someone getting arrested."
