By Devin Fry FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – Five surveillance cameras in Fargoâs Flock Safety network have the ability to lock onto and follow a person walking down the street using artificial intelligence, a capability that Flock Safety has publicly downplayed while marketing it in its own training materials. Fargo police confirmed the feature exists in the departmentâs five Pan-Tilt-Zoom, or PTZ, cameras, all of which are positioned along the Broadway corridor in downtown Fargo. The department says the tracking feature, called Guardian Mode, is turned off. âOur PTZ cameras do have the ability to identify through AI like vehicles and pedestrians,â said Capt. Matt Christensen, who oversees Fargoâs Real Time Crime Center. âIf you have the setting for pedestrians and a pedestrian starts walking by that camera, that camera will lock onto that pedestrian for a certain period of time.â Christensen said Fargo has chosen not to activate that feature. âWe have that turned off just because where theyâre at, that doesnât benefit us,â he said. What the cameras do Fargoâs Flock network includes 26 cameras total, 21 fixed Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, and five PTZ cameras. The PTZ cameras replaced older downtown cameras when Fargo joined the Flock Safety network in June 2024, and are positioned in the same locations along Broadway that cameras have occupied for years. Unlike the fixed license plate readers, the PTZ cameras can pan, tilt and zoom. With Guardian Mode enabled, they use AI to detect movement and follow a subject, vehicle or person, within their field of view. Christensen said Fargoâs cameras are instead monitored and operated manually through the departmentâs Real Time Crime Center. âTheyâre monitored through the real-time crime center, so if we needed to move them for some reason, that would be done manually,â Christensen said.