Seattle Fire Department

Analyses emergency medical 911 calls in real time, providing prompts to dispatchers and assisting decisions about whether particular callers should be routed towards a nurse-staffed service rather than receive an immediate ambulance response. In use since December 2023.

This is a more consequential application than transcription, and the distinction matters: the AI output influences emergency response prioritisation rather than merely recording what was said. Documented governance concerns centre on the absence of public disclosure and review under the city's surveillance technology framework, though these derive from investigative reporting rather than a regulator's finding.

As with the New Orleans entry, this is a fire department rather than a police force, included because emergency response and control rooms fall within this site's scope.

On the department's own effectiveness claim, the two figures it has given do not agree. A 2024 Corti press release quoted SFD Medical Director Michael Sayre crediting the technology with a 50% increase in 911 calls routed to the nurse line; a Fire Department spokesperson later corrected that to 32%. Neither figure has been independently verified. The department also confirmed the system had run without disclosure to callers and without public review, and self-determined that it did not qualify for review under Seattle's 2017 surveillance ordinance.

Update, November 2026. EMS1 reported on 10 September 2026 that Councilmember Bob Kettle, chair of the public safety committee, questioned Fire Chief Harold Scoggins at the committee's meeting on Tuesday 8 September about the AI prompts and the nurse line. Officials said the University of Washington is evaluating effectiveness, without detail, and that Corti cannot use Seattle calls to train its other models; the department had no outcome metrics as of May 2026. Chief Scoggins told the committee that the decision to send a caller to the nurse line, which the city's ambulance contractor AMR operates from Texas, "still rests with the dispatcher". The earlier Seattle Times investigation, as reported by GeekWire, quoted Assistant Chief Chris Lombard as saying dispatchers "retain final authority over every call" and reported that the mayor's administration is developing a public-facing AI governance framework. No pause or end to the use was reported.