This is causing concerns among New Orleans residents.
The City of New Orleans has announced it has implemented a new AI system that will assist 911 dispatchers in answering emergency calls.
The city will use AI agents to answer 911 calls and then the agent will direct the 911 calls to a human dispatcher if it is a dire emergency.
The New York Post had the full scoop on New Orleans using AI to answer 911 calls:
New Orleans has become the first city in the US to use artificial intelligence to answer emergency 911 calls — but critics warn it could have deadly consequences.
The Orleans Parish Communication District — which gets over a thousand emergency dials a day, in what is among the highest volume of calls in the country — is routing the 911 calls to an AI agent that decides which ones get bumped to human dispatchers and which get handled by the bot itself, according to the Shreveport Times.
"I was a 911 dispatcher for 11 years and this is the worst idea you could possibly think of," warned an online critic using the name Boxy, who claimed to be a first responder.
The new tool, known as AI Emergency Call Triage, was first deployed in Louisiana's largest city in late July after being tested on its 311 hotline.
The triage bot analyzes calls to prioritize which emergencies should be handled by humans, while it handles repeat calls or low-priority ones to avoid inundating dispatchers, the Times explained.
OPCD Executive Director Karl Fasold, however, emphasized that the AI is not replacing human dispatchers, and said the system will mainly be used when the caller is within roughly 200 meters of a crash that has already been reported and when all human call-takers are busy, according to local CBS News affiliate WWL-TV.
Critics, nonetheless, fear it could have deadly consequences.
"You have scenarios where the person can't speak well [or have strong accents] — or if they're in a domestic situation and they pretend to call for pizza or something — you have to be able to determine how someone feels or pick up on what they aren't saying," said Boxy, who had a picture of himself in a first responder uniform in his profile.
"You need a person."
New Orleans appears to be the first major municipality in the country to allow AI to actually answer emergency calls.
Here’s how users on X reacted to the news:
New Orleans is going to see people die because of this foolhardy move of integrating AI into 911. https://t.co/T3WoQTUOkw
— ccx15 (@codecrackx15) August 9, 2026
Buy more ammo & learn First Aid 😂 ⬇️
— Vectom (@Osbournegreen) August 9, 2026
New Orleans has become the first city in the US to use artificial intelligence to answer emergency 911 calls — but critics warn it could have deadly consequences. pic.twitter.com/u5ZW3d8h2c
Geekwire reported Seattle has also been using AI to route calls but to a lesser extent than New Orleans is currently using AI agents:
The Seattle Fire Department has been quietly using artificial intelligence to help triage and divert 911 medical calls for more than two years — without telling the public — The Seattle Times reported Sunday.
Denmark-based Corti's AI has been listening to all Seattle 911 medical calls and prompting dispatchers to route certain patients to a nurse-staffed Texas call center rather than send an ambulance, the Times found. The system has operated without public disclosure or formal review.
SFD started using the live AI prompts in December 2023, and the department's medical director credited the technology with driving an increase in calls routed to the nurse line — though the exact figure was disputed. The system was never assessed under Seattle's surveillance ordinance, which requires review of technologies that observe individuals in ways likely to raise social justice concerns.
The nurse line has drawn scrutiny after a 2022 case in which a retiree waited more than 10 hours for an ambulance and was later found dead in her apartment; her estate is now suing.
University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo, co-director of the university's Tech Policy Lab, said the undisclosed AI involvement raises serious concerns.
"A person who is erroneously routed outside of the 911 environment has a right to know how it happened," Calo told the Times.
The practice is spreading across Washington state, with Snohomish and Kitsap counties recently deploying AI agents on non-emergency lines and the Tri-Cities area launching a similar system, according to reports.
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