An AI system meant to streamline police paperwork ended up making things much more difficult. The AI allegedly believed in the magical, as it interpreted a routine Utah traffic stop as either an enchanting fairytale or a nightmarish horror of transmutation, depending on how you look at it.
Earlier this month, software used by the Herber city Police Department in Utah generated a report claiming an officer had shape-shifted into a frog. AI systems aren’t great with context. I could’ve just stopped at “aren’t great,” and it would’ve been fine. But unlike AI systems, I believe context is important.
Another important thing to note is that AI often has no idea what it’s even looking at when presented with data. It’s like a toddler or an especially stupid adult. It just believes what it sees, without considering reason or logic.
A Utah Police Department’s AI Allegedly Said an Officer Shapeshifted Into a Frog
Case in point: As reported by Fox13 Salt Lake City, according to the department’s Sgt. Keel, the AI, mistakenly folded in some dialogue from the Disney movie The Princess and the Frog into a police report because the movie was playing in the background as an officer’s body camera was recording.
“That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports,” he said.
That’s when you learned? These things are notoriously faulty. They f—k up basic information all the time. Constantly. You had better go back to your reports and figure out what other things it f—ked up.
Heber City police had just begun testing two AI tools designed to write police reports from body camera footage: Draft One, which produced the frog interpretation, and Code Four, a newer system created by a pair of 19-year-old MIT dropouts. The snappy elevator pitch is appealing if hollow: less time typing reports, more time policing.
FOX 13 News joined Keel for a staged traffic stop. The AI dutifully did its job in its safe, hermetically sealed, uncomplicated, meticulously staged demonstration. Still, the report required human editing. At the moment, the software seems like more of an assistant than a full-on replacement. Maybe that little bit of time saved is enough to justify its existence.
The department’s trial run with Code Four ends next month, and officials expect to keep some form of AI reporting, though they haven’t yet decided which system to use. Probably whichever one isn’t so easily tricked into thinking humans can morph into frogs.
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