The curious reason why this Alabama city uses AI-based cameras

The government of Opelika, a city in east-central Alabama with a population of approximately 33,000, now uses AI to ensure citizens' safety and stop pranksters.

According to the chief information officer (CIO) for the City of Opelika, Stephen Dawe, they’ve implemented large language models (LLMs) to “recognize behaviors in crowds, keep people safe, and keep the city out of trouble.”

Namely, the City of Opelika installed Cisco Meraki cameras loaded with AI models. According to the Government Technology website, cameras have enough computation power to perform some of the functions, like weather detection or people counting, on the device.

On its website, Cisco Meraki says it is “revolutionizing surveillance with intelligent, cloud-managed smart cameras.”

The city doesn’t have a data center, so all the data goes to Vantiq, operating in the Amazon cloud.

Apparently, the city wants to crack down on pranksters who put soap into the fountains. Government Technology quoted a study from Vantiq, saying that using the system in the Courthouse Square fountain "resulted in an 83% reduction in the frequency of these pranks.” That allegedly equals $75,000 in yearly savings.

It’s also curious that the city is using the technology to count people for economic development purposes.

"Anything that we're doing has to be fully auditable, and we have to be able to explain, 'This is why these decisions were made. (...) We're not trying to build Big Brother. This is not '1984,' and I want to avoid that at all costs."

Another use case for the software is to see if there are people in the Covington pool after hours. Opelika Sportsplex Center uses it to detect a storm so that the lifeguards can clear the pool in time.