On February 26, 2026, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office announced that they are using Artificial Intelligence to help officers write reports.

HCSO Sheriff’s Deputies are using Axon Draft One, which generates a report narrative from the audio of the body worn camera video worn by the deputy when responding to calls for service.

For the time being, this will only be used for non-criminal calls.

Because the AI relies on the audio to create a report, the audio must be very clear. Even though the AI is writing the report, the officers still must check over the entirety and approve it. The Axon Draft One system will also highlight areas where more detail is needed to be filled in.

Using AI to help write reports allows the deputies to focus more time in the field protecting the community rather than report writing.

In the past there have been issues with officers using templates while filling out reports where they just change minor details for different incidents.

The content of the reports can be considered a subject of potential cross-examination if there are details in the body cam footage that are not mentioned or different from what was written in the report.

When deputies are responding to an emergency, or to a location with multiple individuals and a lot of background noise, we anticipate that it will be difficult for the AI Axon Draft to accurately relay all of the details of what is able to be seen on the body worn cameras. AI is notorious for analyzing or transcribing things inaccurately; we don’t expect for this Axon Draft AI to be better than other AI systems in existence currently. Deputies should take this “help” with caution, as any discrepancies can be pointed out and attacked by defense attorneys.

According to HCSO’s assertions, legal experts and civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised concerns about the potential for bias, inaccuracies (hallucinations), and the “black box” nature of AI, urging caution.

While this system is not being used currently by HCSO in criminal cases, there is no reason to believe at present that it will not be used in the future for criminal report writing.