King County Prosecutor Won’t Accept A.I. Written Police Reports

According to Geekwire, an internal memo sent to King County-area law enforcement from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office says they won’t accept artificially-generated reports.

   King County officials fear “A.I. Hallucinations.”

The September 25th memo outlines why AI will not be allowed to generate reports that are sent to the prosecutor’s office. They cite the possibility of errors and other issues.

According to Geekwire:

 “In one example we have seen, an otherwise excellent report included a reference to an officer who was not even at the scene,” reads the Sept. 25 memo from Daniel J. Clark, chief deputy of the Mainstream Criminal Division for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.”

The memo adds more doubt to the potential use of AI by law enforcement agencies across the country. Some are considering, and some have already started to use AI to help generate paperwork.

The King County memo specifically mentioned Open AI’s ChatGPT and Axon’s Draft One. Axon uses AI to draft a report from an audio recording. Axon supplies many law enforcement agencies already with their bodycam technology.

One more issue was raised by the King County Memo, which could be alarming:

“In general, most products are not Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) compliant.  By law, aspects of law enforcement work must remain private and are forbidden to be disseminated outside our community – separate from what is available through public disclosure.  Publicly available applications like ChatGPT and others take the information submitted and then use it to learn and disseminate.  That runs afoul of CJIS prohibitions.”

AI hallucinations are errors in stories or information generated, caused by lack of information, the AI not ‘understanding’ what it is supposed to generate, or a plethora of other issues.  These issues can be minor or major pieces of misinformation.