Non-emergency callers in Waukesha and La Crosse counties may not be talking to a human at all anymore, at least not at first. Both counties have turned to an AI phone agent to handle routine 911 line traffic, routing questions about parking tickets, court dates and jail information to a digital assistant named Ava so human dispatchers can stay locked in on true emergencies.
Ava walks callers through basic questions, pulls up information, and is trained to kick calls straight to a person the moment it hears anything that sounds remotely dangerous. County officials say the system has already soaked up tens of thousands of low-stakes calls and helped cut hold times for people who actually need help from a live dispatcher.
According to WUWM, Aurelian’s Ava has handled more than 50,000 calls across La Crosse and Waukesha since La Crosse deployed the system in May 2025 and Waukesha followed in January 2026. WUWM’s reporting builds on earlier coverage from Milwaukee Magazine and frames the local experiments inside a broader wave of Wisconsin interest in using AI for public-safety communications.
How the AI works
Aurelian describes Ava as a virtual call-taker that answers non-emergency lines instantly, follows configurable standard operating procedures to gather key details, and can even text callers links or basic guidance. The system constantly listens for “hot words” such as “injury,” “weapons” or “crash,” which trigger an immediate transfer to a live dispatcher.
The Waukesha County Communications Center’s biannual report notes that the agency began testing Aurelian in November 2025. Calls handled by Ava are reviewed weekly by dispatchers, who tweak prompts and workflows as they go so the tool behaves more like an extension of the existing team than a bolt-on gadget.
Officials say it lightens the load
Public-safety leaders insist the goal is to boost capacity, not to swap out humans for software. La Crosse’s operations supervisor called Ava a “force multiplier,” and Waukesha’s operations manager said it clears space for call-takers to focus on higher-acuity incidents, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
WPR reports that La Crosse’s system has already shouldered more than 40,000 routine inquiries, from “what is my court date” to “how do I find inmate information.” Waukesha, meanwhile, has been carrying roughly five full-time vacancies in its dispatch center, a staffing gap county leaders say the bot helps to cover, at least for low-risk calls. Officials repeatedly stress that callers can ask for a human at any time, and that people, not software, still run point on actual emergencies.
Broader context and concerns
Waukesha and La Crosse are not alone in handing some of the phones to AI. KIRO-TV reports that Snohomish County’s version of Ava has taken hundreds of thousands of non-emergency calls since 2024, and that Aurelian is also piloting a real-time co-pilot called Cora that sits alongside live 911 call-takers.
Local reporting and academic experts generally agree that the efficiency gains are real, especially for chronically short-staffed centers. At the same time, they flag a familiar list of risks: agencies need to be upfront that a bot is on the line, keep close tabs on accuracy and translation quality for non-English speakers, and watch carefully for bias, confusion or misrouted emergencies as the tech spreads. Those concerns have surfaced repeatedly in recent coverage by Milwaukee Magazine and other outlets.
What to watch
County leaders say other jurisdictions are already calling to ask how it is going. Wisconsin Public Radio reports that multiple Wisconsin counties have reached out to La Crosse officials to pick their brains about results and growing pains.
Hoodline first flagged Waukesha’s initial rollout last November, and county documents show Waukesha is planning to keep Ava in a kind of rolling pilot. Dispatchers will continue weekly reviews and adjustments so the platform evolves with local needs instead of locking in its first version. Officials say they expect to release usage data and error rates as they go, which will help residents judge whether the AI actually delivers on its promise of keeping human call-takers free to focus on the calls that matter most.
