Turning people into frogs — and back into princes — is the stuff of fairy tales. But back in January 2026 this fate befell one Heber City, Utah policeman, when AI accidentally cast the spell. Transcription software picked up the dialogue from “The Princess and the Frog” playing at the scene where the police encounter was unfolding. When AI software used the recording to draft the report, it mistook the movie dialogue for part of the encounter and claimed the officer had turned into a frog while on duty. The mix-up is a reminder that AI might take busywork off your hands, but a human still has to be at the helm.
This is exactly what Northeastern professor of criminology and criminal justice Eric Piza and graduate student Savannah Reid found when they set out to assess how well AI transcription software captured dialogues recorded by body cameras. As they report in their recent paper, the bots whose work they reviewed got most of the text right. However, AI struggled to keep the speakers straight when they switched turns.
