Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court?

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Oklahoma City’s police department is one of a handful to experiment with AI chatbots to produce the first drafts of incident reports. Police officers who’ve tried it are enthused about the time-saving technology, while some prosecutors, police watchdogs, and legal scholars have concerns about how it could alter a fundamental document in the criminal justice system that plays a role in who gets prosecuted or imprisoned. “They become police officers because they want to do police work, and spending half their day doing data entry is just a tedious part of the job that they hate,” said Axon’s founder and CEO Rick Smith, describing the new AI product—called Draft One—as having the “most positive reaction” of any product the company has introduced. Axon is best known for developing the Taser and as the dominant US supplier of body cameras. “Now, there’s certainly concerns,” Smith added. In particular, he said district attorneys prosecuting a criminal case want to be sure that police officers—not solely an AI chatbot—are responsible for authoring their reports because they may have to testify in court about what they witnessed. “They never want to get an officer on the stand who says, well, ‘The AI wrote that. I didn’t,’” Smith said. AI technology is not new to police agencies, which have adopted algorithmic tools to read license plates, recognize suspects’ faces, detect gunshot sounds, and predict where crimes might occur. Many of those applications have come with privacy and civil rights concerns and attempts by legislators to set safeguards. But the introduction of AI-generated police reports is so new that there are few, if any, guardrails guiding their use. “I am concerned that automation and the ease of the technology would cause police officers to be sort of less careful with their writing,” said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at American University working on what’s expected to be the first law review article on the emerging technology. Ferguson said a police report is important in determining whether an officer’s suspicion “justifies someone’s loss of liberty.” It’s sometimes the only testimony a judge sees, especially for misdemeanor crimes. Human-generated police reports also have flaws, Ferguson said, but it’s an open question as to which is more reliable. This article was provided by The Associated Press.