Seattle Fire Department used AI to route 911 calls for two years without public knowledge

Report: Seattle using AI to route certain 911 calls -- without caller knowledge or public review

The Seattle Fire Department has been quietly using artificial intelligence to help triage and divert 911 medical calls for more than two years -- without telling the public -- The Seattle Times reported Sunday. Denmark-based Corti's AI has been listening to all Seattle 911 medical calls and prompting dispatchers to route certain patients to a nurse-staffed Texas call center rather than send an ambulance, the Times found. The system has operated without public disclosure or formal review. SFD started using the live AI prompts in December 2023, and the department's medical director credited the technology with driving an increase in calls routed to the nurse line -- though the exact figure was disputed. The system was never assessed under Seattle's surveillance ordinance, which requires review of technologies that observe individuals in ways likely to raise social justice concerns. The nurse line has drawn scrutiny after a 2022 case in which a retiree waited more than 10 hours for an ambulance and was later found dead in her apartment; her estate is now suing. University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo, co-director of the university's Tech Policy Lab, said the undisclosed AI involvement raises serious concerns. "A person who is erroneously routed outside of the 911 environment has a right to know how it happened," Calo told the Times. The practice is spreading across Washington state, with Snohomish and Kitsap counties recently deploying AI agents on non-emergency lines and the Tri-Cities area launching a similar system, according to reports. SFD Assistant Chief Chris Lombard said that dispatchers retain final authority over every call, even when they receive AI prompts. A spokesperson for Mayor Katie Wilson said the administration is developing a public-facing framework for AI governance and will assess whether existing uses "center human flourishing and serving the public good." Read the full story in The Seattle Times.

Seattle has been using AI to listen to every 911 medical call since 2023. Nobody was told.

Seattle Fire has used Corti AI on all 911 medical calls since December 2023 with no public disclosure or surveillance ordinance review. The Seattle Fire Department has been using artificial intelligence to listen to every 911 medical call in the city since December 2023, according to a GeekWire investigation published this week. The AI, built by Copenhagen-based startup Corti, monitors calls in real time and prompts dispatchers to route certain callers away from emergency response and toward a nurse consultation line operated out of Texas. The department never disclosed the system to the public, never submitted it for review under Seattle's surveillance ordinance, and never sought city council approval. Seattle's surveillance ordinance, codified as SMC 14.18, requires city departments to obtain council approval before deploying any technology that "observes, monitors, or collects data about individuals" in ways that raise civil liberties or social justice concerns. The ordinance was passed in 2017 specifically to give the public a say in how the city uses surveillance tools. A Seattle Fire Department spokesperson told GeekWire that the department does not consider Corti a surveillance technology because it does not store call audio or identify individual callers. Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington and co-director of the university's Tech Policy Lab, disagreed. "A person who is erroneously routed outside of the 911 environment has a right to know how it happened," Calo told GeekWire. The distinction between surveillance and decision-support is not one the ordinance explicitly draws, and the question of whether an AI system that listens to emergency calls in real time qualifies as surveillance technology has not been tested. Corti raised $60 million in a Series B round and works with emergency services in multiple countries. The Seattle Fire Department first partnered with Corti in 2021 for triage support, but the specific use of live AI prompting to route callers to a nurse line began in December 2023. SFD Medical Director Michael Sayre claimed in a 2024 Corti press release that nurse line routing had increased by 50% since the AI was deployed. An SFD spokesperson later corrected that figure to 32%, though neither number has been independently verified. The discrepancy between the department's own figures underscores the absence of external oversight. The nurse line itself is not new. Seattle has used nurse consultation lines for years to handle lower-acuity 911 calls, freeing up ambulances and paramedics for emergencies. What changed in December 2023 is that an AI system began actively prompting dispatchers to divert calls there. SFD Assistant Chief Chris Lombard said dispatchers retain final authority over routing decisions. But the presence of AI prompting in the 911 call workflow introduces a layer of automated judgment that callers are unaware of. The case of Pamela Hogan illustrates why the stakes are high. Hogan, 71, called 911 on April 8, 2022 reporting knee pain, was routed to the nurse line, waited more than 10 hours for a callback, and was found dead in her home weeks later. Her estate is suing the city, and the lawsuit cleared a dismissal hurdle earlier this year. Hogan's death predates Corti's live AI prompting by more than a year, and the nurse line that failed her existed before the AI was involved. But the case demonstrates the consequences when callers are diverted away from emergency response. It raises the question of whether an AI system that increases the rate of such diversions should face public scrutiny before deployment. The lack of disclosure is part of a broader pattern. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said her administration is developing a public-facing AI governance framework that will "center human flourishing and serving the public good." Wilson previously paused the expansion of Microsoft Copilot tools within city government, signalling awareness that AI deployments require oversight. But the Corti system was already running for months before any governance framework was announced. There is no indication that the fire department sought or received mayoral approval for the deployment. The technology is spreading beyond Seattle. Snohomish County uses a different AI system called Ava, built by a company called Aurelian, for non-emergency calls, and says it has handled more than 220,000 of them. Kitsap County has also deployed Aurelian's system on a new non-emergency line. These deployments differ from Seattle's in an important respect: they are limited to non-emergency calls. Corti listens to all 911 medical calls, including those that may involve life-threatening emergencies. The growing push for AI oversight in the United States has focused primarily on frontier models and national security applications. Municipal AI deployments in emergency services have received far less attention, even though they affect people in moments of acute vulnerability. The question Calo raised, whether someone routed away from emergency response deserves to know an AI was involved in that decision, does not have a clear legal answer in most jurisdictions. Corti's system is not making the final call. Dispatchers can override the AI's prompts, and SFD says they do. But the 32% increase in nurse line routing suggests the AI's recommendations are being followed more often than not. When public institutions deploy AI in healthcare settings, the transparency gap between what the institution knows and what the public knows becomes a governance problem, not just a technical one. Seattle built a surveillance ordinance to close exactly that kind of gap. The fire department decided the ordinance did not apply. Whether that interpretation holds up is now a question for the city council, the courts, or both. The AI has been listening for 18 months. The public found out this week.