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How AI Is Changing The Way Police Fight Crime

In recent years, AI is being used in all possible fields to simplify tasks and increase efficiency. While AI has been employed in sectors like transportation, finance, energy, and healthcare for some time, its adoption in policing is relatively recent. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the criminal justice system, from the way police investigate crimes to the way courts sentence offenders. It has the capability to address various types of crime, making it a powerful tool for law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies around the world are leveraging AI technology to enhance the effectiveness of their officers. The objective is not only to prevent crime but also to solve it.

Current Applications of AI by Police

AI is still new to the law enforcement community, so its applications have not yet been fully realized. Nonetheless, it’s already making an impact in key areas like surveillance, crime prevention, and crime-solving. With enhanced imaging technologies and object and facial recognition, AI reduces the need for labor-intensive tasks, freeing officers to handle more complex activities. It also may capture criminals that would otherwise go free, and solve crimes that would otherwise go undetected.

Some of the key areas where AI is already being used are:

Facial Recognition

AI-powered facial recognition technology helps police departments identify criminals and missing persons using image data. It offers greater accuracy than humans and saves time for officers by analyzing images and matching faces more effectively. Advanced systems can even identify a single face in a crowd, aiding in the capture of criminals. Close-circuit cameras with facial recognition capabilities are deployed in public areas to identify and apprehend troublemakers. It is also used for surveillance in sensitive locations such as airports and train stations. The positive results achieved through AI in policing have contributed to its increasing adoption.

Surveillance Cameras

AI is being applied to surveillance camera footage to not only recognize faces but also identify objects and activities like car accidents. This helps police monitor large events and detect potential threats. AI can also analyze street footage to identify vehicles based on set characteristics, aiding vehicle-related investigations. Drone cameras equipped with AI capabilities further assist in search-and-rescue efforts.

AI cameras and video technology play a significant role in assisting law enforcement at crime scenes. In cases where the crime scene covers a large area that is inaccessible by foot, AI can provide insights and assist in finding clues.

Predictive Policing

Predictive policing involves using data and statistical models to predict where crimes are likely to occur, who might commit them, and who could be potential victims. It shifts the focus from responding to crimes to preventing them by allocating resources strategically. It helps police target high-crime areas for additional patrolling and surveillance. AI analysis of historical patterns also assists in identifying individuals at risk of committing crimes or re-offending. Predictive policing has been successfully implemented in several countries, leading to lower violent crime rates.

AI tools help law enforcement agencies identify patterns and predict criminal activities that may go unnoticed by humans. Artificial Neural Networks are used to make calculations based on extensive databases, including social media posts, Wi-Fi networks, and IP addresses. AI in policing also aids in detecting crimes related to money laundering and fraud.

Robots

While replacing the entire police force with robots is not imminent, robots are being used for various tasks. Law enforcement agencies employ physical robots powered by AI to perform tasks that are considered unsafe for humans. They can handle mundane tasks and enter dangerous locations to identify potential threats, improving officer safety. Some robots are equipped to detonate bombs, enhancing public safety.

Discovering Non-violent Crimes

AI is effective in spotting anomalies in patterns, making it valuable for discovering non-violent crimes like fraud and money laundering. Banks and law enforcement collaborate to utilize AI in detecting counterfeit goods and bills.

Pre-trial Release & Parole

AI systems aid the criminal justice system in assessing the risk of flight and determining the terms of parole for offenders. These systems analyze complex data sets and assist in efficient decision-making, considering crime data and personal information.

Other organizations using AI to Detect Crime and Report it

For example, delivery companies can use AI to identify prohibited goods in parcels and report them to the authorities. Medicine and retail stores can employ AI solutions to identify suspicious customers, such as those purchasing large quantities of chemicals or substances. Shipping companies can utilize AI to combat human trafficking by identifying containers used for illegal transportation.

Social media monitoring and analysis

AI is being used to constantly monitor social media messages to detect threatening behavior and ensure the safety of users on social media.

Practical Applications of AI Tools being used in Law Enforcement

AI is being used in policing in a variety of ways, including:

Crime-prevention software in the New York City Police Department is called PredPol. It has been credited with reducing crime in the city by up to 10%. This software uses historical crime data to identify patterns and predict where and when crimes are likely to occur. This information can then be used to deploy officers more effectively and prevent crimes from happening.

Facial recognition technology in the United Kingdom is used to identify suspects and track their movements. It can also be used to prevent crime by deterring criminals from committing crimes in the first place. Facial recognition technology is already being used by police departments in over 60 countries.

AI for smart prison systems in Hong Kong and China is used to monitor prisoners and prevent escapes. It can also be used to provide prisoners with rehabilitation services and help them reintegrate into society after their release.

CASE STUDY — I: Trinetra

Problem: The UP Police faced challenges in solving criminal cases rapidly and efficiently due to the high crime rate in Uttar Pradesh. They sought to enhance their efficiency by leveraging technology, including AI.

Solution: In December 2018, the UP Police launched an AI-powered mobile application called ‘Trinetra.’ Developed by Staqu, the application contains a database of 5 lakh criminals, including their pictures, addresses, and criminal histories. It utilizes facial recognition, visual search, machine learning, and deep learning technologies.

Functionality: Trinetra enables police officers to easily register and search for criminals using simple biometric features such as images or videos. It connects to databases of prisons, District Crime Records Bureaus (DCRBs), State Crime Records Bureaus (SCRBs), and the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS). The application provides real-time access to non-repetitive and non-ambiguous data on criminals active in the state.

Impact: Trinetra has already assisted the police in apprehending a high-profile criminal involved in a shoot-out in Lucknow. The application is set to expand its coverage to 75 districts, 6 Government Railway Police (GRP) units, Anti-Terrorist Squads (ATS), and Special Task Forces (STF). It will be used by over 1,500 police officials, including station house officers, GRP inspectors, and senior police officials.

Future Development: The UP Police plans to introduce additional features in Trinetra, such as vehicle search technology, voice sample search using AI-powered speaker identification, fingerprint-based identification, and active geo-fencing of police personnel. These enhancements aim to further improve the application’s capabilities in criminal identification and investigation.

CASE STUDY — II: Clearview AI

Clearview AI: Clearview AI is a facial recognition firm that has conducted nearly a million searches for US police. The company has amassed a database of 30 billion images scraped from platforms like Facebook without users’ permission. The software is reportedly used by hundreds of police forces across the US. However, many cities have banned its use, including Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Controversial Privacy Practices: Clearview AI has faced multiple privacy breaches and has been fined millions of dollars in Europe and Australia. Critics argue that the use of Clearview’s technology by the police infringes on privacy rights and creates a “perpetual police line-up” by comparing suspect photos to people’s faces without their consent.

Functionality: Clearview’s system allows law enforcement to upload a photo of a face and search for matches in its database of billions of collected images. The software provides links to where matching images appear online, and it is considered one of the most powerful and accurate facial recognition companies globally.

Lack of Regulation: Facial recognition by the police operates with few laws or regulations. The true extent of mistaken identities resulting from facial recognition is unclear due to limited data and transparency. Civil rights advocates call for police to openly disclose the use of Clearview and subject its accuracy to independent testing and scrutiny in court.

Accuracy and Concerns: Clearview claims high accuracy rates, but critics question the reliability of the technology, especially when using images from public sources like CCTV.

Testimony and Legal Use: The CEO stated that Clearview does not want to testify in court regarding the accuracy of its algorithm, as investigators use other methods to verify results. However, Clearview has been used in specific cases, such as finding crucial witnesses and helping in defense efforts. Defense lawyers argue that both prosecutors and defenders should have access to the same technology.

CASE STUDY — III: Revolutionizing school safety with AI technology

License plate recognition (LPR) technology can be integrated into existing security cameras to identify unauthorized vehicles on school premises, potentially preventing dangerous situations.

Facial recognition technology can be used to identify individuals who are not authorized to be on campus, enhancing security measures.

AI-powered virtual assistants can provide real-time emergency information and guidance to students and staff, improving emergency preparedness and response.

Data analytics can help schools identify patterns and trends that indicate safety threats, such as bullying or violence, enabling timely interventions.

AI can assist in monitoring and tracking potential threats, including cyberbullying and online hazards.

Opportunities for AI in Law Enforcement

While artificial intelligence (AI) is not yet being used to its full potential in policing, there are a number of ways that researchers are exploring how AI can be used to improve law enforcement.

Here are some specific examples of how AI is being researched for use in policing:

Biometric identification

AI-powered biometric technology can be used to identify suspects and match them to criminal databases accurately and swiftly.

Body cameras and wearable technology

Integrating wearable technologies with body cameras can enhance threat detection and emergency response capabilities.

Drones and autonomous vehicles

AI-powered sensors and cameras on drones and autonomous vehicles can improve surveillance of public areas.

Natural language processing (NLP)

AI-powered NLP systems can facilitate communication with non-English-speaking communities, reducing language barriers in law enforcement interactions.

Enhance Prison Management

AI can improve prison security, and help in the treatment of inmates with addiction issues. It can also aid in the selection of the best combination of inmates to result in the least amount of conflict.

AI-based dispatch systems for emergency response

AI can automate the process of dispatching officers to emergencies, making the response quicker and more effective. By analyzing data from various sources, AI algorithms can determine the best course of action in real-time.

Traffic Management

AI can help manage traffic patterns and control traffic lights in real-time, enabling efficient routing during planned and unplanned situations. It can also facilitate the movement of emergency vehicles.

Police-Related Citizen Service Delivery

Policing-related services, such as the registration of FIRs (First Information Reports) and investigation of cases, can utilize an AI-based Intelligent Complaint Registration Application. This application could be hosted online or through smart interfaces and employ technologies like Natural Language Processing, speech recognition, and deep learning to streamline the process. By reducing the human factor in service delivery, such tools can help ensure standardized, truthful responses, equal access, and other benefits for citizens.

Risks & Considerations

Today, artificial intelligence is being used by law enforcement for facial recognition and even predictive policing. It can help solve and prevent crimes, but it’s not foolproof. That’s resulted in wrongful arrests and continued racial profiling in policing.

The development and implementation of AI technology have outpaced the creation of laws and regulations to govern its use. This has led to concerns about the impact of AI on human rights.

Lack of understanding and digital literacy: People may not be able to question or challenge the results produced by AI systems. There is a need for a proper interpretation of AI-generated insights.

Loss of privacy: AI has given states the power to create total surveillance states, where individuals can be constantly monitored. This raises concerns about the violation of privacy and other human rights.

Discrimination and bias: AI algorithms can amplify existing social biases due to biased input data, leading to discrimination in predictive policing and criminal justice systems.

Violation of the right to equality: When AI systems are biased, they can infringe on an individual’s right to be treated equally. Predictive tools and risk assessment algorithms may flag certain individuals as high risk based on biased historical data, undermining the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Lack of transparency and fairness: The “black-box” nature of AI algorithms and the reliance on big data sets that may not directly correlate with the crime accused can undermine transparency and fairness in decision-making, infringing on the right to a fair trial.

Accountability: When AI systems are relied upon by police or courts, it raises questions about accountability. If these systems produce biased or unfair results, it becomes challenging to hold anyone accountable for the consequences.

Vulnerability to hacking or manipulation: This high dependency on technology also introduces the additional issue of vulnerabilities to hacking or manipulation.

Key Takeaways

Usage of AI in Analytics:

We have seen how useful predictive policing using AI can be. This is done by using AI in analytics.

AI analytics combines artificial intelligence and machine learning with traditional analytics to generate insights, automate processes, deliver predictions, and drive actions for better business outcomes. It provides a comprehensive view of operations, customers, competitors, and the market, enabling organizations to understand what happened, why it happened, what’s likely to happen next, and the potential outcomes of different actions. AI analytics offers advanced capabilities that go beyond traditional analytics, enabling organizations to harness the power of data and make better-informed decisions for improved business outcomes.

The benefits of AI analytics include enhanced decision-making, improved efficiency and productivity, enhanced customer experiences, and freeing up data teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Hence, it is important for people from different fields to understand how this technology might benefit them, and make informed changes to their business to incorporate this technology so that they can reap the most efficient outcome.

The top tools for AI-powered analytics that can be used for any business are:

Adobe Analytics uses AI to analyze data from different online and offline sources, then visualize insights from your data.

BlueConic is a customer data platform that turns customer data into person-level profiles.

Crayon is a market and competitive intelligence tool that enables businesses to track, analyze, and act on everything happening in their market.

Google Analytics uses machine learning to surface insights and answer your analytics questions.

Google Cloud’s smart analytics solutions use machine learning to get insights into and make predictions.

Helixa helps you produce detailed personas based on audience interests, demographics, and psychographics.

Invoca is an AI-powered call-tracking and conversational analytics tool.

IBM Watson + IBM Planning Analytics can make predictions across finance, operations, and sales.

AI-related Jobs in all kinds of Companies:

The demand for AI jobs is rapidly growing across various industries, and law enforcement is no exception. The use of AI in law enforcement has been highlighted as a significant improvement in the field. In policing, technology jobs encompass a wide range of roles such as electronic surveillance officers, digital forensic investigators, real-time crime analysts, social media researchers, and accident reconstructions, among others. Platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed display numerous job postings for technology positions in law enforcement, including data analysts, computer forensic instructors, intelligence analysts, research analysts, police business systems analysts, and more.


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How A New Type Of AI Is Helping Police Skirt Facial Recognition Bans

Adoption of the tech has civil liberties advocates alarmed, especially as the government vows to expand surveillance of protesters and students.

Police and federal agencies have found a controversial new way to skirt the growing patchwork of laws that curb how they use facial recognition: an AI model that can track people using attributes like body size, gender, hair color and style, clothing, and accessories.

The tool, called Track and built by the video analytics company Veritone, is used by 400 customers, including state and local police departments and universities all over the US. It is also expanding federally: US attorneys at the Department of Justice began using Track for criminal investigations last August. Veritone’s broader suite of AI tools, which includes bona fide facial recognition, is also used by the Department of Homeland Security—which houses immigration agencies—and the Department of Defense, according to the company.

“The whole vision behind Track in the first place,” says Veritone CEO Ryan Steelberg, was “if we’re not allowed to track people’s faces, how do we assist in trying to potentially identify criminals or malicious behavior or activity?” In addition to tracking individuals where facial recognition isn’t legally allowed, Steelberg says, it allows for tracking when faces are obscured or not visible.

The product has drawn criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union, which—after learning of the tool through MIT Technology Review—said it was the first instance they’d seen of a nonbiometric tracking system used at scale in the US. They warned that it raises many of the same privacy concerns as facial recognition but also introduces new ones at a time when the Trump administration is pushing federal agencies to ramp up monitoring of protesters, immigrants, and students.

Veritone gave us a demonstration of Track in which it analyzed people in footage from different environments, ranging from the January 6 riots to subway stations. You can use it to find people by specifying body size, gender, hair color and style, shoes, clothing, and various accessories. The tool can then assemble timelines, tracking a person across different locations and video feeds. It can be accessed through Amazon and Microsoft cloud platforms.

In an interview, Steelberg said that the number of attributes Track uses to identify people will continue to grow. When asked if Track differentiates on the basis of skin tone, a company spokesperson said it’s one of the attributes the algorithm uses to tell people apart but that the software does not currently allow users to search for people by skin color. Track currently operates only on recorded video, but Steelberg claims the company is less than a year from being able to run it on live video feeds.

Agencies using Track can add footage from police body cameras, drones, public videos on YouTube, or so-called citizen upload footage (from Ring cameras or cell phones, for example) in response to police requests.

“We like to call this our Jason Bourne app,” Steelberg says. He expects the technology to come under scrutiny in court cases but says, “I hope we’re exonerating people as much as we’re helping police find the bad guys.” The public sector currently accounts for only 6% of Veritone’s business (most of its clients are media and entertainment companies), but the company says that’s its fastest-growing market, with clients in places including California, Washington, Colorado, New Jersey, and Illinois.

That rapid expansion has started to cause alarm in certain quarters. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, wrote in 2019 that artificial intelligence would someday expedite the tedious task of combing through surveillance footage, enabling automated analysis regardless of whether a crime has occurred. Since then, lots of police-tech companies have been building video analytics systems that can, for example, detect when a person enters a certain area. However, Stanley says, Track is the first product he’s seen make broad tracking of particular people technologically feasible at scale.

“This is a potentially authoritarian technology,” he says. “One that gives great powers to the police and the government that will make it easier for them, no doubt, to solve certain crimes, but will also make it easier for them to overuse this technology, and to potentially abuse it.”

Chances of such abusive surveillance, Stanley says, are particularly high right now in the federal agencies where Veritone has customers. The Department of Homeland Security said last month that it will monitor the social media activities of immigrants and use evidence it finds there to deny visas and green cards, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has detained activists following pro-Palestinian statements or appearances at protests.

In an interview, Jon Gacek, general manager of Veritone’s public-sector business, said that Track is a “culling tool” meant to speed up the task of identifying important parts of videos, not a general surveillance tool. Veritone did not specify which groups within the Department of Homeland Security or other federal agencies use Track. The Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

For police departments, the tool dramatically expands the amount of video that can be used in investigations. Whereas facial recognition requires footage in which faces are clearly visible, Track doesn’t have that limitation. Nathan Wessler, an attorney for the ACLU, says this means police might comb through videos they had no interest in before.

“It creates a categorically new scale and nature of privacy invasion and potential for abuse that was literally not possible any time before in human history,” Wessler says. “You’re now talking about not speeding up what a cop could do, but creating a capability that no cop ever had before.”

Track’s expansion comes as laws limiting the use of facial recognition have spread, sparked by wrongful arrests in which officers have been overly confident in the judgments of algorithms. Numerous studies have shown that such algorithms are less accurate with nonwhite faces. Laws in Montana and Maine sharply limit when police can use it—it’s not allowed in real time with live video—while San Francisco and Oakland, California have near-complete bans on facial recognition. Track provides an alternative.

Though such laws often reference “biometric data,” Wessler says this phrase is far from clearly defined. It generally refers to immutable characteristics like faces, gait and fingerprints rather than things that change, like clothing. But certain attributes, such as body size, blur this distinction.

Consider also, Wessler says, someone in winter who frequently wears the same boots, coat, and backpack. “Their profile is going to be the same day after day,” Wessler says. “The potential to track somebody over time based on how they’re moving across a whole bunch of different saved video feeds is pretty equivalent to face recognition.”

In other words, Track might provide a way of following someone that raises many of the same concerns as facial recognition, but isn’t subject to laws restricting use of facial recognition because it does not technically involve biometric data. Steelberg said there are several ongoing cases that include video evidence from Track, but that he couldn’t name the cases or comment further. So for now, it’s unclear whether it’s being adopted in jurisdictions where facial recognition is banned.


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How Policing Agencies Use AI

AI is transforming policing, sometimes in dramatic ways. Face recognition, predictive policing, and location-tracking technologies — once the stuff of science fiction — now are being adopted by law enforcement agencies large and small.

This explainer gives an overview of some of the ways police are using AI to investigate and deter crime, including:

Identifying unknown individuals or verifying their identity;

Tracking people’s locations and movements;

Detecting crime, anomalies, or suspicious events;

Predicting future crimes, perpetrators, and victims;

Analyzing emotions, including deception;

Determining associations between individuals; and

Managing and analyzing evidence.

The effectiveness of some of these tools is unclear, and the inclusion of a tool on this list is not meant to indicate that it performs well. This document also does not evaluate the benefits or harms of these tools, which will be addressed in separate explainers. Rather, this document is meant to explain how police are using AI and give a sense of the breadth of such uses.

Identification

AI systems can be used to identify individuals or verify their identity.

Face recognition is a computer vision technology that analyzes faces in an image. It can be used for things such as face identification (the identification of an individual based on a comparison with a pool of known individuals) and face verification (verifying that a given face corresponds to a specific person — for example, verifying that a person’s face matches the photo on their identification card).

Iris recognition identifies individuals by their iris patterns. A specialized camera takes an image of the boundaries and textures of the iris, then maps the iris image using over 200 distinct features.

Automated fingerprint identification has been in use for decades; now, AI systems can be used to enable better matching even when a fingerprint is distorted or incomplete. AI also is being used to develop new systems which can take a person’s fingerprint without physical contact.

Palm-print identification, like fingerprint identification, is accomplished through analysis of ridges and valleys on the skin’s surface. Some claim that this technique has advantages over face recognition technology — for example, palms have more details to tell one person from another, and it is harder to scan a person’s palm without their consent.

Ear biometrics can be used to identify individuals who are difficult to identify through face recognition technology — for example, due to the individual wearing a mask.

Gait recognition analyzes how people walk in order to identify them. It has advantages over other biometric systems, as it enables the identification of persons from a distance. Notably, accuracy is a serious issue due to the variability of environments and human bodies.

Voice recognition systems are used to determine the identity of a person based on audio of their voice. These systems use specialized models known as acoustic models to process and analyze audio files.

DNA analysis has long been used by law enforcement to identify suspects. Now, AI is being used to improve this process and make it more efficient. New AI-powered forms of DNA analysis are now being developed, such as forensic DNA phenotyping, which attempts to predict externally visible characteristics such as eye, hair, and skin color, as well as the geographic origins of a person’s ancestors.

Tracking

Policing agencies use AI systems to track the locations or movements of individuals.

Tracking algorithms can detect objects and/or individuals in video files and track them across cameras based on the appearance, velocity, and motion of the thing being tracked. This feature could be used, for example, to search stored video footage from a particular neighborhood and identify all the times that a given individual was recorded.

Vehicle-surveillance systems, also known as automated license plate readers, detect information about passing vehicles, such as a vehicle’s color, make, and license plate number. This data can be stored, along with the location and time of capture, thus enabling police to ascertain the locations of vehicles over time. Some agencies now are using drone-based vehicle-surveillance systems.

Detection

Policing agencies use AI to detect crime, anomalies, or suspicious events.

Anomaly detection seeks to identify events or data points that are anomalous — that is, that deviate from what is expected. This technology is widely used by the private sector— for example, by financial institutions to detect fraudulent transactions or by network administrators to detect cyberattacks.

Some vendors have developed systems designed to alert policing agencies to events such as shoplifting, fights, loitering, dangerous driving, and casing a location. At least one vendor is leveraging vehicle surveillance system data to try to identify driving patterns that may be associated with drug trafficking activity or other unlawful conduct.

Gunshot detection systems use a network of outdoor acoustic sensors to detect and locate gunfire and alert police. Policing agencies use gunshot detection systems to reduce response times, in the hope of locating a shooter, getting help to victims, or finding evidence such as shell casings. New systems use two-source detection — sound and flash — to confirm gunshots.

Weapons detection systems are used to identify the presence of weapons. Computer vision-based systems analyze images to detect objects that appear to be weapons. Other vendors use sensors and analytics to detect concealed weapons and identify their location — an alternative to traditional metal detectors.

Drug detection systems are being used to detect drugs on-site using mobile spectrometers, as opposed to sending samples to a lab.

Prediction

Policing agencies use AI to try to predict the location and time of future crime, as well as those who may perpetrate or be the victims of it.

Place-based predictive policing systems use historical crime data to identify areas prone to crime, and at what times. Systems also can analyze geographic features that increase the risk of crime, known as risk-terrain analysis.

Person-based predictive policing systems seek to identify individuals who are at risk of committing crimes or becoming a victim. This can be based on data such as one’s risk factors for violence or becoming a victim, and/or their frequenting high-crime locations.

Recognizing Emotions

Policing agencies are experimenting with AI systems to analyze an individual’s sentiments or emotions.

Lie detection systems claim to track eye movements and analyze micro-expressions to determine whether an individual is engaged in deception. Some systems are designed specifically for law enforcement use.

Sentiment analysis is a natural language processing technique designed to classify individuals’ sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral. Affective computing, which goes beyond sentiment analysis, seeks to understand and interpret specific emotions based on facial expressions, voice intonations, text, and physiological signals. Sentiment analysis/affective computing might be used, for example, to flag problematic police interactions captured on bodyworn cameras for supervisor review.

Identifying Associations

Policing agencies use AI systems to help detect associations among individuals.

Convoy analysis is a feature for Vehicle Surveillance Systems, or License Plate Readers, that identifies vehicles that travel together, and thus presumably are associated with one other. They allow officers to enter a license plate number and search for related vehicles.

Social network analysis tools suggest how individuals are connected in society, visualized through graphs. For example, AI tools have been used to identify alleged associates based on social media data. Machine learning algorithms are used to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies in social networks.

Evidence Management and Analytics

Policing agencies use AI to help agencies find potentially relevant evidence in large datasets.

Automated metadata tagging can automatically tag and label digital evidence, helping investigators to find relevant evidence in the future. Some body-worn camera systems use AI to tag and label videos with relevant contextual information, helping police locate specific events within large video databases.

Evidence matching tools automatically search an agency’s databases to find evidence that might be related to an incident under investigation.

CSAM detection tools detect and flag the existence of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on devices, helping police to locate such materials and identify victims more quickly.

Transcription tools can be used to transcribe audio automatically from video and audio files. This enables agencies to search for keywords across potentially thousands of videos.







The Future Of AI-Powered Therapy Is Here And Mostly Unregulated

AI-powered therapy bots are gaining popularity, but researchers caution that not every service claiming to be a therapist qualifies as one.

Last spring, psychologist and therapist Jessica Jackson got word about a mysterious website that had become notorious among her colleagues.

“There was a company, an anonymous company. So, they weren’t sharing who they were, but they were paying people to upload their therapy sessions,” she said.

They were paying $50 via Venmo or Paypal for people in therapy who were willing to share 45-minutes of clear audio from their sessions.

No one seemed to know who was making this offer — all of the website domain ownership details were kept private. But she and her colleagues had a hunch as to why that audio was worth money.

“We assumed that they were training a large language model on these things,” she said.

She suspected that whoever was buying the therapy session audio was using it to train a chatbot, a robot therapist.

In principle, she wasn’t offended by the idea behind the website. Recording therapy sessions have long been a part of training for human therapists.

“When I was in grad school, we would record sessions,” Jessica said. “Our supervisor would listen to it and give feedback.”

But the recordings she trained with were made after clients consented to very specific conditions. Their personal information was anonymized, the audio was only available to other therapists in training. This website seemed more like a free-for-all, missing disclosures about how the client’s information would be used. And the therapist’s, too.

“It became a big thing in the therapist community, because that means that clients were now taping their sessions and not letting their therapist know. And then they were getting paid to upload this session and the therapist did not know that was happening.”

She noted audio like this is likely a valuable tool in the race to deploy chatbots to help solve the ever-widening mental health crisis. She says the idea of texting with a bot as opposed to opening up to a real-life person may be a sign of changing times.

“I think younger demographics tend to be a little bit more open to it,”  she said, as one who consults for several technology companies.

Jessica says the pandemic helped make people comfortable with the idea of finding help online and disclosing sensitive information to and through machines.

It normalized seeking help through technology because everything became virtual.

In the 1960s, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a computer program that engaged people in typed conversation with a computer with less memory than most thumbdrives. Despite those early limitations, after a few brief exchanges, Weiznberg’s secretary famously asked the MIT professor to leave the room so she could type to the computer in private.

Today, companies are vying to scale-up the experience.

As the pandemic slowly subsided, Apple introduced a new Journaling app, encouraging iPhone-users to reflect on their day within their phone.

The news received puzzled reactions. There were already plenty of journaling apps out there, so this new feature seemed years behind and lacking real purpose, a hollow repository for your thoughts and feelings. But in the age of mental health chatbots, that repository of personal information could prove extremely valuable as the company introduces “Apple Intelligence” to its devices.

Now, talking to a chatbot instead of a real human seems like just one more step along a path that could lead technology companies right into the $75 billion psychology and counseling industry.

And some people don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

“The excitement is democratization of expertise,” I. Glenn Cohen, a professor and bioethicist at Harvard Law School, said.

Cohen, a self-described techno-optimist, was not surprised to learn how common it has become for people to seek out these relatively cheap, human-sounding chatbots for therapy.

“[If] you are trying to get access to a therapist in America, let alone in a lower middle income country, the waitlist, the cost, it’s extremely high,” said Cohen. “So if we want to take people’s mental health seriously, and we’re not willing to scale-up the supply, or we can’t afford to scale-up the supply of therapists, it’s really exciting there might be opportunities to help and engage people’s mental health and help improve it through the use of some amount of automation or artificial intelligence technology.”

But at least for now, Cohen says most of the technology is not ready for prime time.

Still, dozens of “therapy bots” have emerged online spouting buzzwords and claiming to be “here for you.”

“What worries me is that we already actually have a reported case from Belgium of a man chatting with a general purpose large language model. And essentially, at the end of this conversation, the way it went without guardrails, it advises the man to end his life — and the man ends his life,” Cohen said.

While Cohen acknowledges the complexity of identifying what actually caused the man’s death, he says the case may provide a bleak window into the future.

“When people engage and when they’re in vulnerable positions, as many people in mental health crises are, the concern is that if this is not being used in a responsible way, in a way that can determine if somebody needs something more than the LLM, it really has the potential of putting people in risky situations.”

Cohen says therapy chatbots fall within a regulatory loophole.

While some companies have received FDA approval to deploy their chatbots for cognitive behavioral therapy, many simply label themselves as non-medical wellness apps to legally skirt the FDA oversight and state regulations pertaining to humans offering therapy.

“As a result, I think they fall in this very interesting middle space, which for innovators and entrepreneurs is exciting because it’s a possibility to really explore and to build out. But for those of us who might have concerns about it, it’s something that we want to flag and be worried about and be thoughtful about how we might do better,” said Cohen.

As a psychologist Jessica thinks there is a role for artificial intelligence as a tool for therapists, like an updated crisis hotline and mental health surveillance tool – the first line of defense fielding calls and guiding people toward professionals who can help.

But for now, she has started encouraging her colleagues to ask their clients if they have sought help from chatbots before — to open up a conversation and let their clients know that not everything that calls itself a therapist actually is one — or, has any real expertise in mental health issues.

“If you’ve ever looked at the GPT store and then looked up mental health GPTs, anyone can create one,” she said. “There are several companies out there right now who have built startups that are focused on leveraging AI only and call themselves therapists.”

She questions how these AI “therapists” are being trained.

“There are some data sets that people can use, but they’re not full-on therapy scripts. But also these [chatbots] are [not] being created by clinicians. So how do you know what exactly is the training that’s happening?”

Jessica says people should always ask their therapists for permission before recording their sessions, and remain cautious about uploading versions of these sessions for money without really knowing what that audio will be used for – or how their most private information is stored.


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AI Is Changing Every Aspect Of Psychology. Here’s What To Watch For

In psychology practice, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can make therapy more accessible and less expensive. AI tools can also improve interventions, automate administrative tasks, and aid in training new clinicians. On the research side, synthetic intelligence is offering new ways to understand human intelligence, while machine learning allows researchers to glean insights from massive quantities of data. Meanwhile, educators are exploring ways to leverage ChatGPT in the classroom.

“A lot of people get resistant, but this is something we can’t control. It’s happening whether we want it to or not,” said Jessica Jackson, PhD, a licensed psychologist and equitable technology advocate based in Texas. “If we’re thoughtful and strategic about how we integrate AI, we can have a real impact on lives around the world.”

Despite AI’s potential, there is still cause for concern. AI tools used in health care have discriminated against people based on their race and disability status (Grant, C., ACLU News and Commentary, October 3, 2022). Rogue chatbots have spread misinformation, professed their love to users, and sexually harassed minors, which prompted leaders in tech and science to call for a pause to AI research in March 2023.

“A lot of what’s driving progress is the capacities these systems have—and that’s outstripping how well we understand how they work,” said Tom Griffiths, PhD, a professor of psychology and computer science who directs the Computational Cognitive Science Lab at Princeton University. “What makes sense now is to make a big parallel investment in understanding these systems,” something psychologists are well positioned to help do.

Uncovering bias

As algorithms and chatbots flood the system, a few crucial questions have emerged. Is AI safe to use? Is it ethical? What protections could help ensure privacy, transparency, and equity as these tools are increasingly used across society?

Psychologists may be among the most qualified to answer those questions, with training on various research methodologies, ethical treatment of participants, psychological impact, and more.

“One of the unique things psychologists have done throughout our history is to uncover the harm that can come about by things that appear equal or fair,” said Adam Miner, PsyD, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, citing the amicus brief filed by Kenneth Clark, PhD, and Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD, in Brown v. Board of Education.

When it comes to AI, psychologists have the expertise to question assumptions about new technology and examine its impact on users. Psychologist Arathi Sethumadhavan, PhD, the former director of AI research for Microsoft’s ethics and society team, has conducted research on DALL-E 2, GPT-3, Bing AI, and others.

Sethumadhavan said psychologists can help companies understand the values, motivations, expectations, and fears of diverse groups that might be impacted by new technologies. They can also help recruit participants with rigor based on factors such as gender, ancestry, age, personality, years of work experience, privacy views, neurodiversity, and more.

With these principles in mind, Sethumadhavan has incorporated the perspectives of different impacted stakeholders to responsibly shape products. For example, for a new text-to-speech feature, she interviewed voice actors and people with speech impediments to understand and address both benefits and harms of the new technology. Her team learned that people with speech impediments were optimistic about using the product to boost their confidence during interviews and even for dating and that synthetic voices with the capability to change over time would better serve children using the service. She has also applied sampling methods used frequently by psychologists to increase the representation of African Americans in speech recognition data sets.

“In addition, it’s important that we bring in the perspectives of people who are peripherally involved in the AI development life cycle,” Sethumadhavan said, including people who contribute data (such as images of their face to train facial recognition systems), moderators who collect data, and enrichment professionals who label data (such as filtering out inappropriate content).

Psychologists are also taking a close look at human-machine interaction to understand how people perceive AI and what ripple effects such perceptions could have across society. One study by psychologist Yochanan Bigman, PhD, an assistant professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found that people are less morally outraged by gender discrimination caused by an algorithm as opposed to discrimination created by humans (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 152, No. 1, 2023). Study participants also felt that companies held less legal liability for algorithmic discrimination.

In another study, Bigman and his colleagues analyzed interactions at a hotel in Malaysia employing both robot and human workers. After hotel guests interacted with robot workers, they treated human workers with less respect (working paper).

“There was a spillover effect, where suddenly we have these agents that are tools, and that can cause us to view humans as tools, too,” he said.

Many questions remain about what causes people to trust or rely on AI, said Sethumadhavan, and answering them will be crucial in limiting harms, including the spread of misinformation. Regulators are also scrambling to decide how to contain the power of AI and who bears responsibility when something goes wrong, Bigman said.

“If a human discriminates against me, I can sue them,” he said. “If an AI discriminates against me, how easy will it be for me to prove it?”

AI in the clinic

Psychology practice is ripe for AI innovations—including therapeutic chatbots, tools that automate notetaking and other administrative tasks, and more intelligent training and interventions—but clinicians need tools they can understand and trust.

While chatbots lack the context, life experience, and verbal nuances of human therapists, they have the potential to fill gaps in mental health service provision.

“The bottom line is we don’t have enough providers,” Jackson said. “While therapy should be for everyone, not everyone needs it. The chatbots can fill a need.” For some mental health concerns, such as sleep problems or distress linked to chronic pain, training from a chatbot could suffice.

In addition to making mental health support more affordable and accessible, chatbots can help people who may shy away from a human therapist, such as those new to therapy or people with social anxiety. They also offer the opportunity for the field to reimagine itself, Jackson said—to intentionally build culturally competent AIs that can make psychology more inclusive.

“My concern is that AI won’t be inclusive,” Jackson said. “AI, at the end of the day, has to be trained. Who is programming it?”

Other serious concerns include informed consent and patient privacy. Do users understand how the algorithm works, and what happens to their data? In January, the mental health nonprofit Koko raised eyebrows after it offered counseling to 4,000 people without telling them the support came from ChatGPT-3. Reports have also emerged that getting therapy from generative language models (which produce different text in each interaction, making it difficult to test for clinical validity or safety) has led to suicide and other harms.

But psychology has AI success stories, too. The Wysa chatbot does not use generative AI, but limits interactions to statements drafted or approved by human therapists. Wysa does not collect email addresses, phone numbers, or real names, and it redacts information users share that could help identify them.

The app, which delivers cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and chronic pain, has received Breakthrough Device Designation from the United States Food and Drug Administration. It can be used as a stand-alone tool or integrated into traditional therapy, where clinicians can monitor their patients’ progress between sessions, such as performance on cognitive reframing exercises.

“Wysa is not meant to replace psychologists or human support. It’s a new way to receive support,” said Smriti Joshi, MPhil, the company’s chief psychologist.

AI also has the potential to increase efficiency in the clinic by lowering the burden of administrative tasks. Natural language processing tools such as Eleos can listen to sessions, take notes, and highlight themes and risks for practitioners to review. Other tasks suited to automation include analysis of assessments, tracking of patient symptoms, and practice management.

Before integrating AI tools into their workflow, many clinicians want more information on how patient data are being handled and what apps are safe and ethical to use. The field also needs a better understanding of the error rates and types of errors these tools tend to make, Miner said. That can help ensure these tools do not disenfranchise groups already left out of medical systems, such as people who speak English as a second language or use cultural idioms of distress.

Miner and his colleagues are also using AI to measure what’s working well in therapy sessions and to identify areas for improvement for trainees (npj Mental Health Research, Vol. 1, No. 19, 2022). For example, natural language models could search thousands of hours of therapy sessions and surface missed opportunities to validate a patient or failures to ask key questions, such as whether a suicidal patient has a firearm at home. Training software along these lines, such as Lyssn—which evaluates providers on their adherence to evidence-based protocols—is starting to hit the market.

“To me, that’s where AI really does good work,” Miner said. “Because it doesn’t have to be perfect, and it keeps the human in the driver’s seat.”

Transforming research

For researchers, AI is unlocking troves of new data on human behavior—and providing the power to analyze it. Psychologists have long measured behavior through self-reports and lab experiments, but they can now use AI to monitor things like social media activity, credit card spending, GPS data, and smartphone metrics.

“That actually changes a lot, because suddenly we can look at individual differences as they play out in everyday behavior,” said personality psychologist and researcher Sandra Matz, PhD, an associate professor at Columbia Business School.

Matz combines big data on everyday experiences with more traditional methods, such as ecological momentary assessments (EMAs). Combining those data sources can paint a picture of how different people respond to the same situation, and ultimately shape personalized interventions across sectors, for instance in education and health care.

AI also opens up opportunities for passive monitoring that may save lives. Ross Jacobucci, PhD, and Brooke Ammerman, PhD, both assistant professors of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, are testing an algorithm that collects screenshots of patients’ online activity to flag the use or viewing of terms related to suicide and self-harm. By pairing that data with EMAs and physiological metrics from a smart watch, they hope to build a tool that can alert clinicians in real time about patients’ suicide risk.

“The golden goose is passive sensing,” Jacobucci said. “How can that inform, not only who is at risk, but more importantly, when they’re at risk?”

Natural language processing models are also proving useful for researchers. A team at Drexel University in Philadelphia has shown that GPT-3 can predict dementia by analyzing speech patterns (Agbavor, F., & Liang, H., PLOS Digital Health, Vol. 1, No. 12, 2022). Cognitive psychologists are testing GPT’s performance on canonical experiments to learn more about how its reasoning abilities compare to humans (Binz, M., & Schulz, E., PNAS, Vol. 120, No. 6, 2023). Griffiths is using GPT as a tool to understand the limits of human language.

“These models can do a lot of things that are very impressive,” Griffiths said. “But if we want to feel safe in delegating tasks to them, we need to understand more about how they’re representing the world—and how it might differ from the way we think about it—before that turns into a problem.”

With their toolbox for understanding intelligent systems, psychologists are in the perfect position to help. One big question moving forward is how to prepare graduate students to collaborate more effectively with the computer scientists who build AI models.

“People in psychology don’t know the jargon in computer science and vice versa—and there are very few people at the intersection of the two fields,” Jacobucci said.

Ultimately, AI will present challenges for psychologists, but meeting those challenges carries the potential to transform the field.

“AI will never fully replace humans, but it may require us to increase our awareness and educate ourselves about how to leverage it safely,” Joshi said. “If we do that, AI can up the game for psychology in so many ways.”


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The (Artificial Intelligence) Therapist Can See You Now

New research suggests that given the right kind of training, AI bots can deliver mental health therapy with as much efficacy as — or more than — human clinicians.

The recent study, published in NEJM AI, a journal of the New England Journal of Medicine, shows results from the first randomized clinical trial for AI therapy.

Researchers from Dartmouth College built the bot as a way of taking a new approach to a longstanding problem: The U.S. continues to grapple with an acute shortage of mental health providers. "I think one of the things that doesn't scale well is humans," says Nick Jacobson, a clinical psychologist who was part of this research team. For every 340 people in the U.S., there is just one mental health clinician, according to some estimates.

While many AI bots already on the market claim to offer mental health care, some have dubious results or have even led people to self-harm.

More than five years ago, Jacobson and his colleagues began training their AI bot in clinical best practices. The project, says Jacobson, involved much trial and error before it led to quality outcomes.

"The effects that we see strongly mirror what you would see in the best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy," says Jacobson. He says these results were comparable to "studies with folks given a gold standard dose of the best treatment we have available."

The researchers gathered a group of roughly 200 people who had diagnosable conditions like depression and anxiety, or were at risk of developing eating disorders. Half of them worked with AI therapy bots. Compared to those that did not receive treatment, those who did showed significant improvement.

One of the more surprising results, says Jacobson, was the quality of the bond people formed with their bots. "People were really developing this strong relationship with an ability to trust it," says Jacobson, "and feel like they can work together on, on their mental health symptoms."

Strength of bonds and trust with therapists is one of the overall predictors of efficacy in talk and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Another advantage of AI therapy is the lack of time constraints. Jacobson said he and his team were surprised by how frequently patients accessed their AI therapists. " We had folks that were messaging it about their insomnia symptoms in the middle of the night," he says, "and getting their needs met in these moments."

The American Psychological Association has raised the alarm recently about the dangers of using unregulated AI therapy bots.

But the organization says it's pleased with the rigorous clinical training that researchers invested in this model.

"The therabot in this study checks a bunch of the boxes that we have been hoping technologists would start to engage in," says Vaile Wright, director for the Office of Health Care Innovation at the APA. "It is rooted in psychological science. It is demonstrating some efficacy and safety, and it's been co-created by subject matter experts for the purposes of addressing mental health issues."

Dartmouth researchers stress that the technology is still a long way from market and say they need to run additional trials on the therabot before it will be widely available.

And, Wright says, human therapists should not be intimidated by their AI counterparts. Given the tremendous shortage of mental health providers, " I don't think humans need to be concerned that they're going to be put out of business," she says.

She says the country needs all the quality therapists we can get — be they human or bot.


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Increase In Patients Turning To AI For Therapy

As patients face barriers to mental health care, many are turning to ChatGPT for help, but experts say it brings a risk of devastating mistakes.

With more Australians than ever before reporting barriers to accessible mental health care, GPs have pointed to a growing and worrying trend of patients experimenting with chatbots as a form of talk therapy.

Health experts say they have seen a rise in patients using artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, such as ChatGPT, to seek psychological support.

In one example, a TikTok user is seen writing her thoughts into a word document before entering instructions such as ‘read the following journal entry and provide an analysis of it’ into ChatGPT.

This comes at a time when mental health services continue to be difficult to access, with long wait times and closed books leaving many patients feeling unsupported.

Dr James Collett, a Psychologist and Senior Lecturer at RMIT University, has himself noticed the trend and says AI therapies are ‘here to stay’.

But he said the use of general platforms, such as ChatGPT, could lead to patients missing out on important elements of psychotherapy, such as personal trust and rapport, and so ‘might not be getting the best support’.

‘What we’re seeing is unsupervised seeking of mental health support online,’ Dr Collett told newsGP.

‘There might be cases where people are talking about topics that they realistically need support with, and we would be worried about their welfare, but that’s not coming to light because they’re using ChatGPT.

‘There’s probably some superficially useful therapeutic advice that it can draw on, but it’s not necessarily matching that to clients’ individualised needs.’

Dr Collett said AI could be used to compliment psychological therapy, such as when people are considering if they will seek psychological supports, and to provide scaffolding between sessions or once a course of treatment has been completed.

However, he said these new therapies must be developed by teams with training and experience in psychotherapy.

‘I don’t think that there’s any putting AI back in the bottle, it’s out in the world, so I think it would be naive to propose a message like “we should never use AI for anything to do with therapy”,’ Dr Collett said.

‘I’m sure there are people out there developing therapeutic-oriented AI with an evidence base behind them, I would envisage that is probably the ideal future of AI use in psychotherapy.’

This rise in AI therapy comes at a time when costs, lack of availability, and patients not knowing where to seek help were the top three barriers to people getting the care they wanted, according to a recent Australian Psychological Society survey.

Dr Cathy Andronis, Chair of RACGP Specific Interests Psychological Medicine, told newsGP there are many considerations for clinicians and patients as they consider how to best use AI.

‘While there are benefits for GPs using AI, mostly some time saving with note taking of the conversation, there are many more risks for GPs in a consultation with patients discussing sensitive mental health-related content,’ she said.

Mental health continues to be one of the top reasons patients are seeing a GP, with the RACGP’s 2024 Health of the Nation report finding psychological issues remain in the top three presentations for 71% of GPs.

In August, a four-year review from more than 50 leading psychiatrists, psychologists, and those with lived experience across five continents described the rise in youth mental health problems as a ‘global crisis’.

It found that in less than 20 years, there has been a 50% increase in rates of mental ill-health among Australian youth, with the peak age of onset 15 years old and 63–75% of onsets occurring before the age of 25.

In response, Dr Andronis highlighted that experienced clinicians use metacognition to understand and support their patients, and work towards helping them develop skills to manage on their own – something which AI cannot yet do.

‘An astute clinician recognises key themes and content which are affecting the patient and contributing to their problems, an AI transcriber cannot do this, as it requires reflective skills,’ she said.

‘This capacity for metacognition is the trademark of an experienced therapist.

‘As psychotherapists become more experienced, they focus less on content and more on the process components of therapy … this is our expertise.’

She said it remains to be seen if AI can ever develop the ability for these reflective skills.

‘There is research currently of AI assisted therapy using Chatbots – these are being trained by psychotherapists,’ Dr Andronis said.

‘They can only learn what we teach them. And if they are not well trained, nor taught by experienced therapists, they will make mistakes, including potentially fatal ones for the patient.’