“911, what is your emergency?”
It’s a familiar question, but there’s a new twist: turns out that in some cases, a robot might be on the other line.
In recent days, New Orleans officials made headlines for deploying AI to answer some of the city’s 911 calls, prompting questions about whether having bots handle 911 calls will now be the new normal. The news also sparked debates about what happens (or doesn’t) when a bot answers a call for help.
It seems that all the buzz started with a provocative headline — about something that wasn’t exactly news in the first place. On July 29, 2026, the daily newspaper Shreveport Times reported that “New Orleans will use AI to answer 911 calls instead of a human.” However, the Orleans Parish Communication District issued a statement saying that it “is deeply disappointed in the highly inaccurate article” posted by the news agency.
The triage tool has been used for the last two years “only for a very narrow category of incoming 911 calls” originating “from within a 200-meter radius of an already-reported vehicle crash,” the statement read. It only comes into play when dispatchers are busy. And anyone who calls to report another incident — or one that falls into a category other than traffic — is routed to a human.
While the AI dispatch system in New Orleans might be narrow in scope, it does seem that policing in the Big Easy is getting more high-tech. Jesse Vad, communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, a nonprofit, told Northeastern Global News that while the use of AI for 911 isn’t currently on the organization’s radar, they’ve been keeping a close eye on a related trend: the use of police drones.
If you think all of this might be asking for trouble, you’re not alone. Many have questioned whether outsourcing such a sensitive task to AI bots — no matter how well-trained — could be a risky call.
Northeastern Global News talked to Northeastern University professor Stephen Wood about the situation and his thoughts on putting bots on the receiving end of a 911 call. Here’s what he shared.
