The city of Dallas will equip 100 bulky trash collection trucks with AI-enabled cameras that will help city code compliance employees detect potential violations sooner.
The Dallas City Council is set to consider a resolution on Wednesday, approving the start of the program in early 2026.
The $2.55 million contract over three years will be paid for from the Dallas Sanitation Services budget and provide the city with a monthly snapshot of the condition of each parcel in the city.
Chris Christian, director of Code Compliance for the city of Dallas, told a council committee on Tuesday the cameras will capture what is viewable from the public right-of-way, similar to what already exists on mapping services with street view technology.
“The cameras will be equipped with features to blur faces and license plates, so staff will never see that information,” Christian said. “It’s innovative, it’s creative, I feel like Dallas is the leader in this space.”
District 1 Council member Chad West, who chairs the city council’s Finance Committee, told NBC 5 all questions around privacy and data storage would need to be answered before he could fully support the proposal.
“This is one piece of modern technology that the city does control,” West said. “We need to vet it carefully before we roll it out into our neighborhoods.”
Mayor pro tem Jesse Moreno said he supported the proposal, pointing out that citizens can already file an open records request for 311 investigations, which would include photos of possible code violations, without any blurring.
The city council is set to approve the AI camera item on its voting agenda on Wednesday.
