Marketplace Tech Police departments quietly disable AI-generated report safeguards
Sep 4, 2025
Takendra Parmar, an investigative journalist from Mother Jones, discusses alarming findings about police departments disabling safeguards on AI-generated reports. The conversation reveals how Axon's DraftOne software, designed to summarize body camera footage, is being used without transparency. This raises serious accountability issues, particularly for legal proceedings. Parmar highlights the implications of this secrecy, exploring how it could affect plea deals and the integrity of the criminal justice system in an age of automated reporting.
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AI Can Autogenerate Police Reports
- Axon’s Draft One can auto-summarize bodycam footage into incident reports with minimal human intervention.
- That capability raises transparency and accuracy concerns because AI can introduce errors or hallucinations.
FOIA Reveals Departments Disabled Safeguards
- Takendra Parmar used FOIA requests and found many departments disabled Axon’s safeguards like edit requirements and AI headers.
- Nearly every department that returned records had turned off those transparency features.
Axon Announced Transparency But Enabled Opt-Out
- Emails show Axon announced an AI header/footer for transparency and told departments how to disable it.
- Axon framed the header as transparency yet provided an easy way to turn it off in settings.