AI answering 911 calls? It could help streamline the system

Following a special report into the Austin Police Department's 911 operations, the agency is in the early stages of considering using an AI component mentioned in the report.

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Following a special report into the Austin Police Department's 911 operations, the agency is in the early stages of considering using an AI component mentioned in the report.

The report noted that Denver 911 "is looking at using AI to geotag an area with a known incident and create a voice message for any 911 callers within the vicinity to let them know police are aware of the issue."

So KXAN went straight to the company behind that technology - Carbyne - to get a better understanding about how it incorporates AI into existing 911 systems.

Carbyne's co-founder Alex Dizengof sums up the goal of this as "basically want[ing] to cut down response and dispatch time."

The breakdown of how this works: if a house on your street is on fire and you call 911, several of your neighbors are likely calling 911 too. This can jam up the system. So Carbyne uses geofencing technology to let callers in a certain vicinity of an incident know if first responders are already on the way, so the calls can hang up and free up the line for an emergency that hasn't been addressed yet.

"We're basically looking at the queue and only for the calls not being answered by the call-takers, we answer the calls using AI bots," said Dizengof. "We identify the situation by the location of your call, we're not simply answering everybody with AI, only if you're calling from the location of the incident."

The Austin Police Department said "will be in touch with Denver to get feedback on the technology."

The agency said if it does incorporate an AI element into the 911 system, the city will also have to craft specific policy surrounding artificial intelligence.