ST. LOUIS- There is a new voice for Central County Emergency in St. Charles County that might sound like artificial intelligence.
Meet Samantha, if sounds a bit automated, it's because she is. Samantha has been dispatching for North and South St. Louis County for quite a while.
However, Samantha is not A.I. according to Central County Emergency 911 Executive Director Jason Nettles.
"What you're hearing is a computer automated voice," said Nettles, "Not to tbe confused with A.I., what you are hearing is not two-way conversation, it's a one-way conversation that is essentially a digital voice that is reading what a human voice would've done."
Nettles explained that the system is not a smart system, but rather they have to program the system manually so it can read street names properly.
"When you think of the new A.I. in the field like ChatGPT, you can ask it to write a resume or reference letter for you," said Nettles, "This type of system is a digital system but it's not a smart system. It's only one way communication." said Nettles
Samantha is directly connected to the county's Compute rated Dispatch System, so as soon as a call for service get's entered, and units gets assigned, the dispatcher will review the information and get recommendation for which unit to send.
Nettles says humans will still be answering the phone when someone calls 911, but some departments, like St. Louis County police have used A.I. for non emergency calls.
"We as emergency medical and fire dispatchers, and call takers, we're not using A.I. for call procession at all, we're solely using humans to continue to do that work," said Nettles