Artificial intelligence now taking non-emergency calls in one Ohio county

VIDEO: Calls made to police and fire in Bath Township through the non-emergency numbers are now being answered by artificial intelligence. The city is partnering with Summit County Regional Dispatch to let AI handle their non-emergency calls so that dispatchers might be freed up to handle more serious 911 calls. If you call the non-emergency line there, you will end up speaking with Eva. She is programmed to interact intelligently with callers, reacting to what they are saying, displaying a real-time log of the conversation on screens for dispatchers and creating a summary that can be used for an incident report.

The township entered into an agreement with the programโ€™s Seattle-based creator with a five-year contract paid for through 911 fees collected through the county. So far, Police Chief Vito Sinopoli says Ava has been impressive โ€” asking appropriate questions based on what the caller is sharing and responding appropriately. โ€œOne of the things that impressed me most was its ability to be so intuitive,โ€ said Sinopoli, explaining that Ava is able to translate 30 different languages and is programmed to sense any indications in a โ€œnon-emergencyโ€ call that would make it more serious. It can then immediately transfer the call to a live dispatcher.

WKBN-TV CBS 27 Youngstown

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