Law enforcement has quickly embraced AI for everything from drafting police reports to facial recognition.
The results have been predictably dismal. In one particularly glaring — and unintentionally comedic — instance, the police department in Heber City, Utah, was forced to explain why a police report software declared that an officer had somehow shapeshifted into a frog.
As Salt Lake City-based Fox 13 reports, the flawed tool seems to have picked up on some unrelated background chatter to devise its fantastical fairy tale ending.
“The body cam software and the AI report writing software picked up on the movie that was playing in the background, which happened to be ‘The Princess and the Frog,'” police sergeant Rick Keel told the broadcaster, referring to Disney’s 2009 musical comedy. “That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports.”
The department had begun testing an AI-powered software called Draft One to automatically generate police reports from body camera footage. The goal was to reduce the amount of paperwork — but considering that immense mistakes are falling through the cracks, results clearly vary.
Even a simple mock traffic stop meant to demonstrate what the tool is capable of turned into a disaster. The resulting report required plenty of corrections, according to Fox 13.
Despite the drawbacks, Keel told the outlet that the tool is saving him “six to eight hours weekly now.”
“I’m not the most tech-savvy person, so it’s very user-friendly,” he added.
Draft One was first announced by police tech company Axon — the same firm behind the Taser, a popular electroshock weapon — last year. The software makes use of OpenAI’s GPT large language models to generate entire police reports from body camera audio.
Experts quickly warned that hallucinations could fall through the cracks in these important documents.
... continue reading