Arlington County to use Amazon AI for non-emergency calls

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Non-emergency 911 calls in Arlington to be answered by Amazon AI program

Amazon Connect Artificial Intelligence will now answer calls from Arlington residents for non-emergencies like noise complaints or towing. The AI service will answer the call, ask questions and direct you to the right department. FOX 5's Tom Fitzgerald spoke to Jacob Saur, the administrator of Arlington's Communication Center, about how this new initiative will help ease the workload.

The next time you call the non-emergency number in Arlington County, it will not be a human that takes your call. It will be an Amazon computer program.

Amazon Connect Artificial Intelligence will now answer calls from Arlington residents for non-emergencies like noise complaints or towing. The AI service will answer the call, ask questions and direct you to the right department. 

Jacob Saur, Administrator of Arlington's Communications Center, tells FOX 5 it will ease their workload. 

"On top of the 911 calls that Arlington takes, we take over 200,000 non-emergency calls into the county a year, so that is going to work with helping that workload," said Saur. 

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Officials say the Amazon Connect AI will not store any personal information with Amazon. Arlington County plans to expand the use of Amazon’s artificial intelligence to connect the system to its online reporting forms and for directly updating residents on when their non-emergency issues have been resolved as well.

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