The Anchorage Police Department (APD) has concluded its three-month trial of Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that uses audio from body-worn cameras to write narrative police reports for officers—and has decided not to retain the technology. Axon touts this technology as “force multiplying,” claiming it cuts in half the amount of time officers usually spend writing reports—but APD disagrees.
The APD deputy chief told Alaska Public Media, “We were hoping that it would be providing significant time savings for our officers, but we did not find that to be the case.” The deputy chief flagged that the time it took officers to review reports cut into the time savings from generating the report. The software translates the audio into narrative, and officers are expected to read through the report carefully to edit it, add details, and verify it for authenticity. Moreover, because the technology relies on audio from body-worn cameras, it often misses visual components of the story that the officer then has to add themselves. “So if they saw something but didn’t say it, of course, the body cam isn’t going to know that,” the deputy chief continued.
The Anchorage Police Department is not alone in claiming that Draft One is not a time saving device for officers. A new study into police using AI to write police reports, which specifically tested Axon’s Draft One, found that AI-assisted report-writing offered no real time-savings advantage.
This news comes on the heels of policymakers and prosecutors casting doubt on the utility or accuracy of AI-created police reports. In Utah, a pending state bill seeks to make it mandatory for departments to disclose when reports have been written by AI. In King County, Washington, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has directed officers not to use any AI tools to write narrative reports.
In an era where companies that sell technology to police departments profit handsomely and have marketing teams to match, it can seem like there is an endless stream of press releases and local news stories about police acquiring some new and supposedly revolutionary piece of tech. But what we don’t usually get to see is how many times departments decide that technology is costly, flawed, or lacks utility. As the future of AI-generated police reports rightly remains hotly contested, it’s important to pierce the veil of corporate propaganda and see when and if police departments actually find these costly bits of tech useless or impractical.
