Even RoboCop didn't have this kind of technology.

Police equipment giant Taser International last week launched a new artificial intelligence division for its bodycam business, with plans to develop facial recognition software that could lead to 'Minority Report'-style policing of instant public background checks.

The company, best known for its eponymous electrical stun weapons, announced the ambitious new venture with the acquisition of two video-recognition software firms that will combine to form Taser's new AI team.

The implications of AI-augmented bodycams are raising privacy and civil rights concerns over the possibility that cops could soon roam the streets running continuous identification and background checks on passersby, like the ubiquitous eye-scanners from the sci-fi crime thriller 'Minority Report.'

Shown is a body camera from Taser International. The company last week announced an artificial intelligence division that will develop video recognition and search capabilities

Taser CEO Rick Smith says the company's main focus with the initiative is on reducing police paperwork, though, a prospect that will surely appeal to overworked cops across the country.

'Rather than arduously written by police officers overburdened by paperwork,' searchable video would allow incident reports to be 'seamlessly recorded by sensors,' said Smith in a statement.

The software could some day transcribe audio and index subject names via facial recognition, for self-generated incident reports, freeing up cops to spent more time policing, said Smith.

But civil rights advocates are shuddering at the thought of vast, searchable video archives controlled solely by police departments.

The bodycam AI software is meant to help 'police officers overburdened by paperwork,' says Taser CEO Rick Smith (pictured), by automatically generating incident reports from video

'We're talking about a company making very far-reaching decisions about the use of emerging technologies in policing,' Clare Garvie, an associate at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology, told Vocativ. 'It's really an open question right now what controls will be put in place at the public agency level.'

Police departments across the country have struggled to come up with guidelines for storing and sharing bodycam videos.

Transparency advocates and journalists have argued for greater public access, but privacy activists are concerned about releasing video that shows innocent bystanders who may not be aware they're being filmed.

Taser argues that their bodycam AI could help solve both problems, by allowing cops to search video instantly and respond to public records requests faster, as well as use the software to blur the faces of bystanders.

As the technology evolves though, instant background checks could certainly be forthcoming. Today, about half of American adults are already in law enforcement facial recognition databases, according to a Georgetown Law report.

For the civil rights activists who clamored for more police bodycams, it may not be long before the medicine they demanded looks worse than the original ailment.