Taser maker Axon is mandating AI use to speed up work as its surveillance tools face scrutiny

When Rick Smith founded Taser International in an Arizona garage in 1993, his original vision involved taking a device that was originally created by a NASA scientist and redesigning it in a way that would make it palatable to law enforcement agencies. More than three decades later, Smith’s company—now called Axon Enterprise—has sold more than one million Taser devices and diversified its portfolio to include body cameras, drones, and license plate reader cameras to law enforcement, emergency responders, and private-sector security customers. More recently, Axon has also focused on selling adjacent software and artificial intelligence tools, helping the company report ten consecutive quarters of revenue growth above 30%. But its push into AI coincides with escalating criticism about how officers are using these technologies for surveillance. Police officers have been either fired or charged with using Flock Safety’s AI-enabled cameras to stalk former romantic partners and other personal connections. AI systems erroneously led to an arrest of a man accused of trying to lure a child from a McDonald’s in 2023, and more recently, led to a Florida woman spending two weeks in jail after being wrongly accused in a deadly hit-and-run incident. Most of the public’s ire has centered…