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The city of Dallas, Texas, armed its trash collection trucks with AI-powered cameras earlier this year. This month, the NBC station down there did an investigation and discovered that they’re being used to assign “blight scores” to homes and send residents warning letters about things like grass height and dirty chimneys. Basically, we now have the technology to turn the entire country into an HOA.
I’m sick of writing about the horrors of automated infrastructure, but this nonsense needs to be stopped before it spreads.
NBC 5 Investigates found that “artificial intelligence identified at least one possible code violation on more than 21,000 properties,” and then shared some examples of things that were flagged: “Lawn, Grass Height, Sidewalk, Debris.”
A City Detect camera mounted on a Greenville, SC trash truck. City Detect
The station caught up with local real estate broker Ty Williams, who got a courtesy notice for “chimney paint” on a house he owned after one of these cameras came by. He shared a photo of the chimney, and it’s, like, just a regular chimney with some slight discoloration from age.
“It’s a money grab. That’s basically what this is all about,” Williams said to NBC.
No kidding. And, obviously, any operation to judge citizens on the tidiness of their front yards disproportionately screws lower- and fixed-income folks. Not everybody can afford the time and money to have their place manicured for trash collection day every week.
NBC made a heat map of where the most violations were detected, and the concentration in Southern Dallas is hard to miss. Take 75216, one of the zip codes lit up with detections: its median household income is about $41,000. Dallas as a whole sits at about $70,500—and the wealthy enclaves in the north of the city clear $180,000. Absolutely unsurprisingly, the cameras found the most to complain about in the parts of town with the least money.
The company that operates the cameras is called City Detect, and its tendrils extend way beyond Dallas. The City Detect tech is working in at least three other states besides Texas. NBC shared a statement from the company’s CEO: “Our system blurs faces and license plates, doesn’t connect to any law enforcement or federal database, and, by design, requires city staff to review a detection before any action is taken.”
Adobe Stock, edited by the author
There’s not much comfort one can take from that. Not “connected to a federal database” doesn’t mean it can’t be used for nefarious purposes (intentionally or unintentionally). And that doesn’t get at the immediate problem: This tech effectively creates a new tax on people who are unable to bring their property to somebody’s beauty standards in time for trash day.
This kind of thing is going to continue to be a problem unless, maybe, we complain about it relentlessly. In Dallas, City Council member Chad West proposed a budget amendment “that would strip funding for the cameras,” but it got delayed. West agreed to table his request after he said the city manager agreed to a hearing on the issue in December. For the rest of us, here’s a new technology to be informed about and vote against every chance you get.
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Automotive journalist since 2013, Andrew primarily coordinates features, sponsored content, and multi-departmental initiatives at The Drive.
