By Webb Wright
Publication Date: 2026-01-21 08:00:00
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Perplexity for Public Safety Organizations launched in January.
- Police can use it, for example, to analyze crime scene photos.
- Other AI developers could soon follow suit.
Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has launched a new initiative aimed at getting its technology into the hands of public safety professionals, including police officers. Unveiled last week, Perplexity for Public Service Organizations offers one free year of the company’s Enterprise Pro tier for up to 200 seats, with discount options available to larger agencies.
As anyone who routinely uses LLM-based tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT knows, these tools are fallible, to say the least: they’re prone to hallucination, inaccuracy, regurgitation of cultural biases that have seeped into their training data, and as a general rule, they’re designed to optimize for engagement rather than human well-being. Protocols around how to use them safely are very much a work in progress.
The upshot is that when it comes to sensitive industries like law enforcement, little errors can go a long way.
Mundane use cases, big consequences?
In its announcement, the company said the program is intended to help officers make more informed decisions in real time, and to automate routine tasks like generating descriptions of crime scene photos, analyzing news stories and body camera transcripts, and turning…
