Kicker: Hallucination patrol

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Time was that an intelligent princess kissing a frog turned him into a handsome prince. Now we learn that when artificial intelligence kisses a cop, it turns him into a frog!

Bear with me. Police in a small Utah town near Provo started using AI to save officers time. It listens to body cam footage and writes up what it hears.

Audio from KSTU:

OFFICER: Now the recording is saved. I just have to dock the camera and it'll write the report.

Yeah, but you’ve heard about hallucinating AI?

Well, this one went bonkers.

At some point it heard this movie playing in the background.

MOVIE: So what now? I reckon you'd want a kiss? / Kissing would be nice, yeah? 

The Princess and the Frog, if you know it. That movie dialogue confused the AI, which spit out a report saying the officer had become a frog.

Just going to prove the old fairy tales are true: magic shortcuts rarely work the way you expect.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.