It turns out those Flock cameras aren’t the only example of AI surveillance that are ticking people off anymore. The city of Dallas, TX has installed side-facing AI-powered cameras onto its garbage trucks that photograph properties, scan the photos for any potential code violations, and assign what’s called a ‘blight score’ based on the severity of the code infraction.
50 trash trucks carry two cameras each, aimed at either side of the street, where they take photos from the public right-of-way to flag code violations. So far over 21,000 properties have been flagged, resulting in about 1,800 courtesy notices which, if left unaddressed, can later turn into a fine.
NBC Dallas Fort Worth obtained city records that show notes on every infraction the cameras found, including their blight score which ranks code violations from one to four based on their severity. It includes complaints like lawn grass height, debris on the sidewalk, branches on the lawn, and issues with paint.
Unsurprisingly the majority of citations were issued in economically challenged neighborhoods
Dallas announced a three-year, $2.5 million contract with the company City Detect for these AI cameras last year, but the city only began testing them on trash trucks in April, and ramped up their efforts over the summer. NBC mapped the locations of the code violations detected by the cameras and found that most detections are in economically depressed areas in Southern Dallas…