After giddy business executives, cops are emerging as some of the AI industry’s most devoted disciples.
Police officers are increasingly using AI-integrated tools on the job, though not without courting significant controversy. The error-prone nature of large language models has left law enforcement operations in a scramble, resulting in hallucinated police reports, evidence fabricated with generative AI, and even incidents of stalking via AI-integrated surveillance cameras.
The most recent example comes out of Vancouver, where police set off a firestorm after publishing an image of a drug bust labeled “made with AI” on X-formerly-Twitter.
According to Canada’s CTV News, the original image depicted an unimpressive haul of petty cash and dime-bag quantities of various drugs.
At a glance, nothing in the image seems doctored as the “made with AI” label seems to suggest. On closer look, however, the spread of dollar bills clearly show $50 bills labeled as $20s, while a $100 bill reads as “00.”
Asked by CTV why they used AI to manipulate the image, Vancouver’s sergeant Adam Donalson wrote that “we used software to edit out the names of the accused” — a confusing response, given that the original image showed the contraband arranged on a plank of cardboard and labeled with sharpie.
If Vancouver PD meant to publicize their paltry spread online, why include the names of the accused in the first place? Donalson further explained that the AI picture “has been taken down and replaced with the original photo that has been cropped to exclude the names of the accused,” making the whole situation even more convoluted.
Given that other cops have used AI images to falsify evidence like this, Vancouverites weren’t thrilled to see their own police toying around with the tech, even if just to crop an image.
“You showed an AI-generated image of fabricated evidence to the public, which includes potential jurors,” one netizen fumed under the updated image. “This whole case is going to get thrown out.”
“Where’s the AI photo you posted earlier?” another poster replied. “I like being lied to by the police, it’s good for building trust!”
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