admitted to<\/a> using controversial facial technology tool Clearview AI in October 2019 and committed to stop using it in February of the following year. <\/p>\n911 calls will still be answered by human operators<\/p>\n
Watts also wants to assure the public that a human operator will still be on the line when they call 911.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the use of AI in a public-facing format does raise concerns for some.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Morteza Zihayat, an assistant professor of human-centred AI at Toronto Metropolitan University, first heard about the system, he wondered how it would handle calls that don\u2019t clearly fall under the non-emergency category.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if there is a misclassification and your systems do not understand the context in the way that we as humans understand?\u201d he asked. \u201cOr maybe it’s a non-emergency situation, but it’s escalated quickly to an emergency situation. So what’s going to be the process there?\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH | 911 call wait times down to three seconds after hiring spree:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769190549_785_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Toronto police say average 911 wait times down to 3 seconds<\/p>\n
According to Toronto police, the average time for a 911 caller to connect with an operator is down to three seconds so far this year. <\/p>\n
In an email to CBC Toronto, Hyper CEO Ben Sanders said if the system detects an emergency or a situation escalates, the call will immediately be redirected to a 911 operator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is an improvement over the former system where someone experiencing an emergency but calling the non-emergency line by mistake would have a longer wait before being redirected, he said.<\/p>\n
Another concern for Zihayat is whether the system could provide incorrect information, such as oversimplified police procedures or inaccurate instructions for reporting a crime. <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes [AI systems] can confidently provide wrong or incomplete instructions,\u201d he said, pointing to examples like ChatGPT.\u00a0<\/p>\n
System can’t provide incorrect information, says company CEO<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not how Hyper works, Sanders explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike open-ended generative AI, Hyper operates within strict guardrails. It only provides answers grounded in agency-approved data, and if it can\u2019t answer reliably, it hands the call to a human rather than risk giving incorrect information,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Zihayat also raised questions about caller privacy, but Sanders says Hyper has factored that in as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cCalls and data are protected with strong security controls, limited access, and strict use policies aligned with government and law-enforcement requirements. Ultimately, caller data is owned by the police department and not used by Hyper for any training or external purpose,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-428495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769190549_627_default.jpg\")
Supt. Gregory Watts with the TPS Communications Unit says new AI system will eliminate wait times for non-emergency calls. (Arrthy Thayaparan\/CBC)<\/p>\n