If you cast your mind back some 8 years ago, you might remember that Torrevieja was chosen for a pilot scheme which saw a small booth installed on the Paseo Vistalegre, which allowed members of the public to interact from the booth with Guardia Civil officers remotely, to report crimes and administrative matters.
Although the scheme was launched with great fanfare, it soon quietly disappeared. However, it now looks set to return, in a different format, as Torrevieja has been initially chosen as one of the locations where another new system will be piloted, but this time, rather than speaking to an actual human, you will be able to deal with an AI generated interpretation of a Guardia Civil officer.
The Ministry of the Interior has put out to tender the specifications of the pilot project with which it seeks to implement “super-realistic avatars” of agents based on artificial intelligence to, through interactive screens, manage citizen attention in Guardia Civil posts.
The pilot project “Virtual Guardia Civil”, with a maximum budget including extensions of 604,814 euro and a duration of two years from January 2024, refers to “the best care for citizens residing in Spain due to the demographic challenge and the professional and personal conditions of the members of the Corps”.
“The need to launch a project based on the artificial creation of super-realistic avatars with the corporate image of the Guardia Civil that, through artificial intelligence and its integration into a natural language interface designed for interactive screens, becomes evident. “They will be deployed in locations and points in Spain facing the demographic challenge.”
According to Interior sources, this is a pilot project that will be implemented first in Majadahonda (Madrid) and Torrevieja (Alicante), and what it aims to do is install virtual reality panels to establish a “first filter” when managing some procedures carried out by citizens in Guardia Civil offices.
Although Torrevieja has suffered from depopulation, it is not normally considered “rural”, but time will tell if this virtual AI will be able to tackle the increase in crime, and indeed if the information will be reliable, as, in Spain, only 19% of people believe AI generated information to be accurate, according to one recent survey, and even academics have proven that the one human trait that some of the tools is developing, ChatGPT in particular, is that it is getting stupider over time.
