GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY — In June, Grand Traverse County approved the purchase an an A.I. System meant to help 911 dispatch with calls.
Now, those calling the non emergency hotline have been hearing a new voice on the other side.
Meet Ava.
She is designed to take a callers information and will direct them to where they should go, whether they called the wrong number or need to speak to a dispatcher.
Ava is part of a 3 year contract with Aurelian AI, with the first year being a trial run the county could cancel at any time.
Right now, they are in the training portion of the program.
Dispatch Director Corey LeCureux tells us they don’t quite have it up and running yet, saying “We are turning it on once a day at this point for a certain period of time. While we train the eye and work out some of the bugs on the system. But we’re hoping that, next week we can have it up and running full blast. ”
Director LeCureux says the goal is to help dispatchers, telling us it is meant to help dispatchers focus on emergencies that need help right now.
But like training a real human, sometimes mistakes happen. as when we were testing out the system ourselves, twice it sent us to the leelanau county dispatch.
But it is all growing pains all they have to do is file a report and Ava will learn and adjust,
Director LeCureux adds that they have had some people try and find a work around in the system, but it won’t work.
He says ”So on one hand, there’s people that are like me and they just don’t want to cooperate. And they sit there and they push buttons and they say dispatcher, dispatcher, dispatcher over and over and over again. And we understood that’s what’s happening. Like I said, that’s how I would probably handle it. But then on the other side, there are people that are actually interacting with Ava, like, she’s a real person. And, and just all she’s doing is answering questions and taking those answers and putting it into the system. And the people that are cooperating with the system are getting to where they need to go way faster than the people that are looking for a workaround.“