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Choosing The Good AI™: A Privacy-First Framework for Cities
City leaders face growing pressure to adopt AI responsibly. Here's a privacy-first framework for evaluating AI vendors — and the questions worth asking before you sign.
Feb 11, 2026
Right now, city managers across the country are fielding harder questions about the technology they deploy. Residents want to know: Who has access to our data? What are you sharing, and with whom? How is AI being used in our neighborhood?
These aren’t just fair questions. They are necessary questions. And city leaders should be asking them of every technology vendor that supports public servants.
The challenge is that AI is no longer an optional addition to municipal operations. It's embedded in the smartphones code enforcement officers carry, the tablets housing inspectors use in the field, the case management platforms that route complaints, and the productivity tools — Microsoft, Google Workspace — that run day-to-day government operations. AI has been added to most of these products gradually, quietly, through updated terms of service and privacy policies that few have time to read carefully.
The real question for city leaders isn't whether their teams are using AI. It's whether they know how that AI was built, what principles guided it, and whether their vendor can answer the hard questions directly.
What the Law Already Tells Us
Residents cannot opt out of code enforcement. Municipal code exists to protect community health, safety, and quality of life, enforcing it is a public responsibility, not a negotiation. What residents can reasonably expect is that the tools used to do so are held to a high standard of privacy protection.
Justin Gardiner, Code Enforcement Supervisor for Cathedral City, California, put concerted effort into getting City Detect's technology through city council, where privacy concerns were central. His response cuts through a lot of noise:
"What's the difference between my code officer leaning out the window and snapping a picture and this? It's the road right-of-way, the public right-of-way. There's no reasonable expectation of privacy in your front yard. If your concern is that an AI camera is going to get a picture of you in your chonies taking your trash out — maybe you shouldn't take your trash out in your chonies."
Municipal departments, from fire and sanitation to code enforcement and public works, don't operate on whim. They operate on a legal foundation established in municipal code, state statute, and decades of case law. That foundation defines what public servants can see, where they can go, and what authority they have to act. Computer vision tools used in service of those departments operate within that same framework. It's a useful lens for evaluating any such tool: is it operating from a position consistent with what city staff are already legally authorized to do?
For City Detect, the answer is yes.
What "Privacy-First" Actually Looks Like
For City Detect, privacy protections are not a policy layer added after the fact. They are engineering decisions baked into how the system works.
"Bias is not something that can be addressed once and forgotten," says Jonathan Richardson, City Detect's Head of AI. "Continuous oversight and monitoring occur at every stage of the AI lifecycle — from model training to beta testing, and into production environments."
City Detect is committed to protecting individual privacy at every stage of our process. Our technology is designed to assess visible property and roadside conditions, such as overgrown lots, graffiti, shopping carts, and abandoned vehicles.
Images are collected to document environmental conditions in the public right-of-way, and municipalities have the option to enable automated blurring of faces and license plates within the platform. This provides cities with full control over how imagery is managed and ensures alignment with their privacy policies and community standards.
Our Responsible AI Policy is a guiding principle that runs from engineering through sales and marketing. It is not a terms-of-service update. It shaped how we built the product.
Who Controls the Data
Municipal leaders retain full control over their data and sharing permissions. City Detect does not share city data with external parties without our clients' explicit authorization. Human reviewers — your code enforcement officers, housing staff, public works teams — are in the loop on every flagged condition before any action is taken. Local expertise and community context remain at the center of every decision.
Our SOC 2 Type II attestation, conducted by an independent auditor over several months, verifies that these controls operate as described, consistently, not just on paper.
Come Ask the Hard Questions
City Detect was built to help local governments do more with less, equitably, transparently, and without compromising the trust communities place in their leaders. We don't shy away from scrutiny. We think it makes the work better.
