In Reply to: This time it's REALLY Friday* posted by mh on September 18, 2026 at 10:10:42
Garbage trucks now do more than just pick up tossed-out food scraps and junk. They also snitch on people with unkempt lawns.
In at least four states (California, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas), some city-run sanitation vehicles are being outfitted with AI-equipped cameras from a company called City Detect. The cameras quietly snap photos of residents’ yards and run the images through software that flags tall grass, litter, graffiti, or other more serious code violations like collapsing roofs. Properties found in violation then get assigned a “Blight Score” from 1 to 4, reflecting the severity of the mess. If left unresolved, human reviewers can use information gleaned from those snapshots to issue fines.
In Dallas, Texas, the system has reportedly flagged at least one possible code violation in more than 21,000 properties analyzed since the city began testing the service last April. City Detect claims its camera system has already detected 6,000,000 violations issued nationwide.