The Siri Killer

The best crime-solving detective in the world might be sitting in your living room right now

- Kevin Maney

NOW INSPECTOR GADGET actually is a gadget. A couple of decades ago, DNA tests were the frontier in solving crimes. But the array of devices we’re putting in our homes and on our bodies are quickly becoming a detective’s new best friend— at least while we still have detectives. Before long, artificial intelligence should be able to analyze the data pouring in from devices and nail criminals better than any human gumshoe. Time to develop a new TV show: CSI: Robots.

Two recent, well-publicized cases have given us a glimpse of this future. One involved Amazon’s Echo device, which is driven by the company’s artificial intelligence software, Alexa. An Echo can sit in a home and listen for verbal commands or questions. More than a year ago, James Bates had a friend over to his house in Arkansas and allegedly killed him after the two drank a boatload of vodka. Police found an Echo in the house and wanted Amazon to hand over any recordings or data from the night of the killing, thinking maybe Bates asked it something incriminating, like “Alexa, how do you get blood off an ax handle?” Amazon refused, but Bates’s lawyer filed a motion in April saying his client would volunteer the data, which Amazon then sent to prosecutors.

Data from a Fitbit helped crack another case, which began in 2015 after police arrived at a couple’s Connecticut home and found the woman shot dead. The husband said there had been a violent struggle with an intruder, but the Fitbit worn by the wife showed she was walking around the house at the time her husband claimed they were fighting off an attack. Based on this new information, prosecutors charged the husband, Richard Dabate, with murder, in April.