HEBER CITY, Utah — The police report read like a fairy tale: during a routine incident, an officer “shape-shifted into a frog.” The only problem was that none of it happened.
The bizarre line appeared in an AI-generated draft report based on body-worn camera footage, as the Heber City Police Department experiments with new software designed to cut down on paperwork. Investigators later traced the “transformation” to something far less mystical: background audio from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog that was picked up by the body camera and then mistakenly woven into the narrative by the report-writing program, Sgt. Rick Keel told FOX 13.
The department is currently testing two AI systems, Draft One and Code Four, that generate written reports from body-cam recordings. The promise is simple: less time typing at a desk and more time available for calls and patrol. Keel said a typical report can take one to two hours to write, but the new tools are saving him roughly six to eight hours a week.
Those time savings are why agencies around northern Utah have been taking a hard look at the technology. In Heber City, officials have compared Draft One, which builds reports from body-cam audio, with Code Four, which uses both audio and video. Both can produce reports in English and Spanish, and both allow officers to adjust the level of detail in the draft, from a quick synopsis to a more complete play-by-play.
But the frog incident also highlights the central concern with automated narratives: the software can confidently get things wrong.
Heber City officials say the lesson is straightforward: AI can draft, but humans still own the final product. The frog line, Keel said, was a reminder of “the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports.”
