The next time you call Salem’s non-emergency line to report a rowdy neighbor or a yappy dog you might be talking to a multilingual automated assistant called Ava.

Ava is a call processing system that uses artificial intelligence to interface with callers. It’s being tested by the city of Salem at the Willamette Valley Communications Center, the regional dispatch center that serves over 400,000 people and 32 public safety agencies across Marion, Polk, and Lincoln counties. 

The pilot program will last six months. It’s intended to see if the system can help relieve call takers at the dispatch center from having to answer so many non-emergency calls, so that they can focus more on emergencies. 

The Salem Fire Department operates the communications center. The fire department’s Assistant Chief of Business Operations Brian Carrara said the dispatch center took around a half a million calls in 2025. Half of those were non-emergency.

The system doesn’t rely on AI to decide what counts as an emergency. Callers who call 911 will still be routed to a human call taker.

But people who call the city’s non-emergency number for police will be routed first to Ava.

Carrara said the fire department’s non-emergency number will be included in the program at a later date. He said the current testing includes nine non-emergency lines, three from each county, which were identified as being the busiest. 

Carrara said using an AI system is not meant to replace humans taking calls. It means callers with minor issues won’t have to wait on the line while call takers prioritize true emergencies. 

“Some people are afraid of AI because they just don’t know it. It is pretty incredible what this can do and how it can interact,” Carrara said. “It seems like you are talking to a person, and that AI bot, Ava, is doing the job of those people so those 911 call takers can handle emergency calls when needed.”

The dispatch center isn’t laying off any employees or cutting positions.

City spokesman Jason Roberts told Salem Reporter in an email that if the city decides to proceed with the system after the six months, the annual cost for the service is about $175,000 annually. The figure is based on historical call volumes, Roberts said.

Roberts said the A.I. is part of the Aurelian platform which is a system specifically designed for public safety and emergency communications. He said Aurelian is used by agencies across the country. 

Carrara said the AI is trained to route callers to the appropriate departments or resources when calling about a non-emergency matter. If it does encounter an emergency, it will push the call to a human operator as needed. 

When Salem Reporter called the non-emergency dispatch number for the Salem Police Department to test making a noise complaint, the AI assistant asked a series of questions, and then provided phone numbers for the city’s community development and code enforcement departments via text message. The bot instructed Salem Reporter to file the complaint by calling the numbers provided. 

The AI system can also understand when humans speak to it in other languages, but the caller is first asked to select a different language prior to engaging with the AI 

“If Ava cannot work through the problem for them (the caller) or if it is critical, or it is actually an emergency…or Ava hears a gunshot in the background, she immediately pushes it to a communications specialist,” Carrara said. “She knows 37 languages…We have nobody in the city that knows 37 languages. I don’t think anybody in the world knows 37 languages.”

Carrara said humans will oversee the AI system and will monitor calls, review information and call people back when appropriate. 

“At the end of the day if we can do both, take care of the employees and the customers, without reducing service, that is what we want to do,” Carrara said. 

Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected]. 

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