Axon's Draft One AI Police Report Generator Is Designed to Defy Transparency

Summary

Axon Enterprise’s Draft One — a generative artificial intelligence product that writes police reports based on audio from officers’ body-worn cameras — seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that could provide any accountability to the public, an EFF investigation has found. Our review of public records from police agencies already using the technology — including police reports, emails, procurement documents, department policies, software settings, and more — as well as Axon’s own user manuals and marketing materials revealed that it’s often impossible to tell which parts of a police report were generated by AI and which parts were written by an officer. You can read our full report, which details what we found in those documents, how we filed those public records requests, and how you can file your own, here. Everyone should have access to answers, evidence, and data regarding the effectiveness and dangers of this technology. Axon and its customers claim this technology will revolutionize policing, but it remains to be seen how it will change the criminal justice system, and who this technology benefits most. For months, EFF and other organizations have warned about the threats this technology poses to accountability and transparency in an already flawed criminal justice system. Now we've concluded the situation is even worse than we thought: There is no meaningful way to audit Draft One usage, whether you're a police chief or an independent researcher, because Axon designed it that way. Draft One uses a ChatGPT variant to process body-worn camera audio of public encounters and create police reports based only on the captured verbal dialogue; it does not process the video. The Draft One-generated text is sprinkled with bracketed placeholders that officers are encouraged to add additional observations or information—or can be quickly deleted. Officers are supposed to edit Draft One's report and correct anything the Gen AI misunderstood due to a lack of context...