Axon orders staff to use AI while Los Angeles delays its streetlight plate readers

The liability half of this story has less behind it than the framing suggests. Fortune describes a man arrested in 2023 and a Florida woman who spent two weeks in jail after AI systems erroneously pointed at them ^[16], but the passage does not say whose software was involved. It does say most of the public's anger has centered on Flock ^[6], a different company.

What the article pins on Axon is narrower and mostly self-reported. During development of Draft One, said Chief Technology Officer Jeff Kunins, the models wrote that a white subject "left the scene" while a Black subject "fled the scene" in otherwise identical cases ^[8]. "Obviously, that's a flagrant example of inappropriate bias coming out of the models solely because of the description of the skin color of the person," Kunins said ^[9]. Axon fine-tuned the models to make outputs consistent ^[10].

Against that sits the growth: ten consecutive quarters above 30% ^[3], or two and a half years ^[13]. In August, CEO Rick Smith acknowledged an anti-surveillance movement that echoed the backlash after the release of Tasers ^[12], and told investors: "Any new technology in public safety is going to go through an adjustment period, and I would say the critics aren't all wrong" ^[7]. We think a chief executive who says that on an earnings call is pricing a cost, and the cost reported so far is one pilot on hold ^[4].

The mandate itself is thinly described. Fortune reports hackathon training sessions for engineers and the wider staff, and IT work customizing AI features in Workday and Salesforce ^[2]. The passages available do not state who must use which tools or how use is measured.

We would change our view on any of three findings. A court filing or settlement that names Axon software in a wrongful arrest would turn reputational risk into liability. A second city council following Los Angeles would turn one delay into a sales pattern. A quarter at or below 30% growth would show the scrutiny is costing revenue. The counter-thesis is Smith's own comparison: the company has sold more than one million Taser devices in the decades after that backlash ^[11], and we cannot rule out that plate readers and report drafting follow the same path.