Whatever you think of AI software, it certainly has its uses when it comes to law enforcement. It’s already helping police crack cold cases around the world
Bots are coming for the baddies! This week the Daily Star revealed that TV investigator Mark Williams-Thomas reckons artificial intelligence will solve the Madeleine McCann case.
The ex-cop thinks AI could help analyse data to identify potential suspects and lines of inquiry in the unsolved 2007 disappearance of the three-year-old in Portugal.
But Robocops are already at work helping to catch criminals. Here we reveal some of the ways AI is being used…
Serial spiller : Evil Joseph DeAngelo committed multiple murders and rapes in California during the 1970s and 1980s. But for years the maniac, known as the Golden State Killer, eluded the cops and justice.
He was finally sentenced to life for 13 murders in 2020, after a combination of AI-assisted DNA matching and forensic genealogy helped build a ‘family tree’ of the culprit, narrowing down the potential suspects and leading detectives to DeAngelo. He pleaded guilty.
Photo finish: On February 10, 2006 a brutal triple murder took place in the town of Anchal in Kerala, India. A 24-year-old mother called Ranjini and her 17-day-old twins were found at their home with their throats slit.
Police identified two suspects, Divil Kumar and Rajesh, army personnel from a local base but the pair fled before they could be arrested.
Then in 2023, police used AI to digitally age their faces then used them to track down the alleged killers through social media, who were said to be using new identities.
Keys to conviction : AI helped convict paedophile Luke Cassidy, from Coventry, after police forensic teams used specialist AI software, which was trained on the words used in Cassidy’s phone messages, to find evidence that he had groomed and sexually abused young girls.
He was handed a 19-year sentence with five more on licence in 2022.
Smart work : Avon and Somerset Police have been trialling the use of an AI system called Söze that can analyse video, social media, emails and hard drive data all at once. It was able to review evidence relating to 27 complex cases in just 30 hours. It would have taken a human 81 years.
Meanwhile Cheshire cops have been using AI software to analyse incident reports to identify stalkers.
Held to account : An AI tool used by banking firm Santander has been helping to track down gangs involved in human trafficking in the UK.
The super software enables the monitoring of suspicious activity on customers’ accounts and has generated hundreds of potential leads for the National Crime Agency.
Tech-ing it back : A new AI tool has been used by the government to recover nearly £500milion in fraud committed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The tech, called the Fraud Risk Assessment Accelerator, has helped identify unlawful council tax claims and illegal subletting of social housing.
Nazi clue : A chilling photo from World War Two shows a German soldier about to shoot a prisoner in a notorious massacre of Jews in modern day Ukraine in 1941.
Now historian Jürgen Matthäus believes he has identified the killer, with the help of AI photo analysis. He claims it was former teacher Jakobus Onnen, a member of an SS murder unit. He died in fighting in 1943.
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