Axon, the public safety contractor this made the Taser popularhas launched a new product that’s less scary but still a little worrisome: an AI-powered software program that allows police officers to automate their police reports.
Axon names its new product Draft one. According to a press release issued Tuesday, Draft One is a “revolutionary new software product that produces high-quality police reports in seconds.” The software is based on the powerful GPT-4 large language model and can reportedly write reports by automatically transcribing audio data the police body cameras that Axon sells. Forbes was the one report first to introduce the new product.
Axon’s new software is promoting a reduction in police work so that police officers can spend more time in their communities. In its press release, the company describes the benefits of its technology as follows:
Police departments across the United States are understaffed. While agencies place emphasis on recruiting and retaining employees, demand to fill open positions is low. The shortage leads to longer response times to service requests and overtime for officers, which can lead to burnout and be costly to taxpayers. Ultimately, Draft One has the potential to amplify and empower officers, freeing them up to better serve their communities.
However, some critics I quickly noticed that this product that was supposed to solve the police’s problems could also cause a lot of problems for everyone else. The Forbes article quotes Dave Maass, director of surveillance technology research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who called the new product “kind of a nightmare.” Maass noted that most police officers are not trained to use AI and therefore may not be accustomed to recognizing its weaknesses. Daniel Linskey, a former Boston police superintendent who was also interviewed by the news agency, also urged caution when using the technician.
The problem is that AI is known “hallucinate”– that is, to make up gibberish. At the same time, it seems possible that the police could use the software to absolve themselves of legal responsibility in certain cases. That is, if something questionable were to appear in a police report and the report was “written” using Axon’s new software, it seems plausible that police officers could incorrectly blame the software for errors or inaccuracies that were actually inserted by a human – Doubts sew on the way. Therefore, the use of this technology would require strict regulatory guidelines to ensure that it is not misused by police departments.
Axon claims in its press release that Draft One introduced a “set of critical safeguards” and that “each report [generated by the software is required] “Be reviewed and approved by a human official to ensure the accuracy and accountability of the information before reports are filed.” Still, the comfort you derive from these assurances likely depends on how much confidence you have in doing the job correctly by the police. For some members of the public this trust is likely to be quite low.
Draft One has not yet been widely used, although the company says its trials with law enforcement agencies have helped those agencies save about an hour of work per day. The press release also quotes a Fort Collins Colorado Police Services police sergeant who claims the software has allowed his agency to “reduce the time spent writing reports by 82%.”
Gizmodo has reached out to Axon for more information about its new product and will update this story if the company responds.