Winter Garden Police uses AI to pick up non-emergency calls

Check this out, a Central Florida police department is turning to artificial intelligence to help handle non-emergency calls. Winter Garden police have introduced AI technology called AVA. Alexis Clevenger has the story. The Winter Garden Police Department is bringing artificial intelligence into its non-emergency call system. The department has introduced AVA, and it will support communications serving Winter Garden, Ocoee, Windermere and Oakland. Rather than talking to one of our dispatchers, you're gonna be talking to an automated voice. Now AVA is designed to help residents get help without waiting on hold. We actually voted on this or commissioned it back in February. So this has been in the works for a minute, but we're pretty excited about it. And Winter Garden isn't the first to make the move. This AI technology was rolled out in Volusia County last year. This is the address where the noise is occurring. Police in Winter Garden say this system will allow telecommunicators more time to focus on emergencies and calls that require their attention. Our dispatchers handle the telephone calls that come in, but they're also handling the radio traffic to the officers. So it's a lot of multitasking that goes into it. And if you need to speak with a person. Your information. If for whatever reason the system's not functioning to their satisfaction, to the citizen's satisfaction, and they're starting to get frustrated with it, the system's actually designed to pick up on that and then route that person to a dispatcher. Alexis Clevenger, Fox 35 News.