The Anchorage Police Department just wrapped up a three-month trial of using artificial intelligence to help write police reports.
They’ve decided they’re not moving forward with the technology — at least for now, according to APD Deputy Chief of Administration Gina Burington.
“We were hoping that it would be providing significant time savings for our officers, but we did not find that to be the case,” Burington told the Assembly at a Public Health and Safety committee meeting Wednesday.
The program is called Draft One, and it’s run by Axon Enterprise, the company that supplies the city’s body cameras for police. Burington said Draft One uses an AI to review audio captured by body cameras to generate a police report.
“The officer then, of course, would need to go in and read it, edit it, verify that the information is correct,” Burington said.
Alaska governments have limited history with using AI. A recent high-profile example was the state Department of Education and Early Development generating a draft report on school cell phone use using AI. The report was criticized for citing academic studies that didn’t exist.
The Draft One program was offered to APD for a free 90-day trial that wrapped up in late November.
Burington said the time officers were taking to review the generated reports cut into the time that the AI was saving officers in writing the reports themselves. Also, since the program only analyzes audio, Burrington said the AI reports didn’t include all of the details.
“So if they saw something but didn’t say it, of course, the body cam isn’t going to know that,” Burington said. “So they would have to add things, subtract things, make sure that it was accurate and complete and a reflection of what they wanted their report to say.”
Though APD isn’t moving forward with Draft One, Burington said as AI technology improves in the future, the department is open to revisiting its use in police operations.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
