The police have experimented with chatbot Wout further expanded. Residents of Hengelo can now also report noise nuisance via the "virtual agent". This was previously possible for residents of Zwolle and Rotterdam IJsselmonde. In addition, the police announced at the beginning of this month that victims of ransomware and helpdesk fraud can now report to Wout. The police state that people would like to get in touch with the police in a different way than just by telephone or at a police station.

The experiment will run until December 1 of this year. After that, it will be checked whether Wout “may stay”, according to the Hengelo police Instagram. When Wout cannot process the report properly, he is automatically transferred to a live chat with a police officer.

The police hopes that Wout will receive many reports in the near future. “The more reports Wout has to process, the better he will develop. This virtual agent learns very quickly and it is expected that in the future he will be able to deal with increasingly complex reports and will be able to 'talk' to reporters in a 'human' way. During this new trial period, it is especially important that as many reports as possible are received via Wout.”

Technology