Southern Maine police are testing new AI software to write their police reports [Video]

Police agencies in Maine are dipping into the world of artificial intelligence, they say, to help them save on hours of paperwork so they can do more policing.

But experts who have studied this technology question whether it will actually save time, or if it will only bog down and raise more distrust in the criminal justice system.

Lt. James Estabrook demonstrated the potentially time-saving new tool in the parking lot of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office in Portland this month. He hopped out of his cruiser, clicked a button on his body camera and walked through a fake traffic stop scenario.

After he pretended to issue a warning to his colleague for speeding, he ended the body camera recording with the click of a button. But behind the lens, the footage was being sent to the cloud to be analyzed by AI which, within seconds, produces the first draft …