Motorola Solutions Combines AI, Voice and Video for Police

Almost a century ago, the most advanced police departments could boast of having one-way radios in their official vehicles, allowing on-duty officers access to the latest crime information.

A new Motorola Solutions public safety product shows how far law enforcement has advanced and foreshadows changes to come as artificial intelligence continues its journey deeper into the mainstream.

The company has started selling its SVX video remote speaker microphone.

The device, which resembles a body camera and is worn on the officer’s center chest area, “converges secure voice, video and AI, designed for the company’s flagship radio,” called APX NEXT.

Motorola also has launched a tool called Assist, described as an “AI sidekick” that can “leverage voice, video and data from across your agency for better, more accurate insights.”

Via Assist and SVX, officers can perform such tasks as checking license plates or driver’s license data to seek records and warnings that help with investigations and the identification of people suspected of crimes.

Assist can also “detect keywords in radio traffic” — including such a phrase as “shots fired” — to send alerts to nearby officers and commanders back at headquarters. The AI can provide some of the answers to questions that officers usually ask dispatchers, potentially saving time during emergencies.

Assist performs “live language” translations for officers and members of the public, among other duties that are part of the daily jobs of law enforcement.

“We think it’s a new category of device,” is how Jeremiah Nelson, Motorola Solutions’ corporate vice president of Response, Reporting and Evidence Solutions, described the new offering to Government Technology.

SVX can detect conversations conducted at whisper level while also recording an “evidentiary” voice track that can aid with the writing of police reports, he said.

The AI is not writing the report for officers — who still review and edit the documented details to make sure they are right — but rather “helps to write better reports,” he said. In the past year or so, concern has grown about giving AI too much power to write its own reports.

The new device provides a 55 percent reduction in equipment weight, he said. Because of its capabilities, SVX enables officers to wear less equipment — an ongoing concern since the early days of modern policing, with law enforcement increasingly required to carry more weapons, radios and emergency supplies.

About 100 officers tested the product before its official launch on Monday, Nelson said.

The launch comes at what seems like a historic time for policing.

Agencies still face staffing and retention challenges as the political and cultural atmosphere toward the job remains skeptical and tense, especially in the wake of the George Floyd murder and other incidents. As all that happens, AI and drones represent new and expanding frontiers for law enforcement, just like those one-way radios did about a century ago.

All the new tech is not meant to change law enforcement but make the job as efficient and safe as possible without putting up new barriers for police officers, Nelson said.

“The core practices of policing will stay the same,” he said.