Tasmania Police trialled Draft One, an AI assistant developed by US firm Axon, in 2025 to reduce the administrative burden on officers writing reports on family violence incidents. The tool analyses audio from body-worn cameras and produces draft narratives for officers to review and approve.
The first phase of the trial analysed nearly 150 historical body-worn camera recordings from family violence incidents. The second phase, conducted in Launceston over several months, compared human-written reports with those assisted by the AI.
The evaluation found Draft One reports were written and validated in an average of 42 minutes, almost twice as fast as traditional methods. This could save approximately 160 weeks of work time and $434,187 in wages annually, the evaluation said. It also noted the tool sometimes identified coercive behaviours that officers had missed.
However, the AI introduced errors. In one case, Draft One wrote that a woman alleged a person with a hidden firearm had made threats against her life. When an officer reviewed the original footage, the woman had said words similar to "no threats or anything like that" while another person was speaking. The evaluation said Draft One performed well in simple, single-officer interactions but decreased in effectiveness in complex scenarios involving multiple people, where it occasionally misidentified roles, omitted key details, or generated overly verbose narratives.
Tom Sulston from Digital Rights Watch said it was "really worrying" that the tool had not performed well in complex family violence situations, describing it as "least functional when it would be most useful." He pointed to overseas reports of errors, including a Forbes story where Draft One suggested an officer had shape-shifted into a frog after misinterpreting audio from a Disney film.
Alina Thomas from Tasmanian family violence support service Engender Equality said AI assistance could be helpful but should not substitute human experience and communication. She suggested protocols allowing victim-survivors to have a say on whether AI tools are used in their cases.
The evaluation recommended a phased rollout once clear ethical governance policies were in place. A police spokesperson said funding models, further consultation, and additional trials would be required before any potential rollout. Axon's website states Draft One does not add speculation or embellishments and that officers must review reports before approval.