AI code enforcement is coming to Dallas. What does it mean for resident privacy?

Written by Dallas Documenter Jenna Stephenson

With City Council’s passage of the 2025-2026 budget, Dallas is set to become the first Texas city to use artificial intelligence for proactive code enforcement.

As Code Compliance Director Chris Christian explained at City Council’s Aug. 12 budget workshop, the Department of Code Compliance will equip 50 sanitation vehicles with cameras that use AI to identify common nuisance violations such as high weeds, litter and graffiti.

Code Compliance’s Neighborhood Code Division ensures that residents maintain clean, safe properties by enforcing City ordinances against hazards like sidewalk obstructions, substandard structures and illegal dumping.

According to Code Compliance Assistant Director Jeremy Reed, the City attempts to address violations within three to seven days, usually through voluntary compliance. The department starts by notifying the property owner, and if the owner does not act to resolve the violation, then the department can issue a citation, which often carries a fine.

The AI camera initiative is the result of a partnership with City Detect, an Alabama-based startup that leverages computer vision to help municipalities address urban blight.

When the new software recognizes a potential code violation, it will send a still image of the issue to the Department of Code Compliance, along with GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken. Each detection will be reviewed by Code Compliance staff, a process which the department estimates will take 10-15 seconds per detection.

The $853,000 annual operating cost for the project was recently approved by the Dallas City Council as part of the 2025-2026 budget, and the City is currently working to finalize its contract with City Detect. The Department of Code Compliance’s total budget is $44.6 million, which is $1.6 million less than the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Dallas anticipates a rise in code violations discovered by artificial intelligence

City Detect has carried out similar programs in other cities, but Dallas will be the largest municipality to employ the technology and the first in the state.

Christian told City Council that during a four-day pilot program last year, the AI cameras successfully flagged more than 3,000 code violations with 95% accuracy. The large volume of detections is consistent with City Detect’s projects in other cities. In Stockton, Calif., a municipality a quarter the size of Dallas, AI cameras identified over 29,000 potential violations in the first month of operations. In comparison, the Dallas Department of Code Compliance averaged less than 15,000 code violations per month in 2024.

The Department of Code Compliance divides the city into seven service areas, and in 2024, 65% of code violations were found within the Southeast, South Central and Southwest service areas.

Sylvia Lagos, an Oak Cliff resident and former code enforcement officer, expressed concern about the long processing times for code violations reported by residents. She hopes the AI cameras will make Code Compliance more proactive, but believes the department’s resources would be better spent on educating residents about the responsibility that property owners have in self-enforcement.

“It makes no sense, because they already have a lot of other work, and they cut their budget,” Lagos says.

Despite the likely increase in reported violations, Christian told council members that the Department of Code Compliance does not anticipate additional labor requirements. Reed said about 35% of code violations are reported by Code Compliance staff conducting neighborhood patrols. With the introduction of the City Detect cameras, some of those staff can be reallocated away from street patrols and toward human review of data collected by the AI cameras.

Sherri Mixon, a South Dallas resident, echoed Lagos’ concerns about a lack of education. She believes that the Department of Code Compliance should be investing in more enforcement officers who can participate in community outreach and help residents bring their properties up to code.

“I’m not a fan of the cameras,” Mixon says. “The cameras cannot welcome me, cannot educate me, and I don’t see them helping me.”

City Detect allows cities to prioritize certain types of code violations to help manage the influx of detections. Dallas has not specified any priorities at this time, but City staff will have the opportunity to customize the software as the agreement with City Detect is finalized.

“It will allow us to prioritize those issues that have a higher safety and health impact, and so that will allow us to dispatch officers more quickly,” Reed says of the City Detect software. “But all those other lower-priority items are still going to be addressed.”

Reed says higher priority issues include vacant properties, graffiti, dumping and high weeds.

Privacy concerns

Lagos also raised potential privacy concerns, but noted that increased surveillance could motivate some residents to take action on potential violations.

“People will think they’re under constant surveillance when their trash gets picked up,” she says. “So it could be a minus, and it could be a plus.”

A similar City Detect contract in Huntsville, Ala, was dropped from consideration this September after pushback from community members because of the project’s cost and concern for resident privacy. Huntsville was the first municipality where a proposed contract with City Detect was not approved by the city council.

Gavin Baum-Blake, CEO and co-founder of City Detect, attributed the proposal’s failure to a tight turnaround in Huntsville that didn’t allow ample time for open dialogue with constituents.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t really have a phenomenal opportunity to educate and inform about the privacy safeguards that we have in place,” Baum-Blake said.

He says City Detect mitigates privacy concerns by processing and storing its data within the United States, and offers city governments the option to blur personally identifying information, such as faces and license plates. Baum-Blake says the City of Dallas hasn’t yet decided whether it will incorporate the blurring option.

The City of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department have worked with other tech companies like Clearview AI and Flock Safety to track people and vehicles, but Baum-Blake said City Detect’s software is only intended to be used on man-made structures.

“We have no focus on people,” he says. “That’s not the space we want to be in.”

Reed says his department will use the information provided by the cameras only to enforce code compliance; however, he did not confirm whether other departments eventually will have access to the information collected by the City Detect cameras.

The city is working to finalize its contract with City Detect and aims to have the AI cameras operational by Jan. 1, 2026.

Dallas Documenter Jenna Stephenson reported and wrote this article after the topic emerged from public meeting notes. Stephenson is a Documenter for Dallas Documenters (powered by Dallas Free Press) and Fort Worth Documenters (powered by the Fort Worth Report). She studied international relations and computer science at Wellesley College, and hopes to cover the impact of technology policy in North Texas as a community journalist.

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