2024: Impact and responses to threat of AI generated imagery to online harms
12 week focussed commission
Challenge
Law enforcement has been increasingly under burden with the growing scale and sophistication of material related to online harms. The rapid evolution of AI-generated content makes detection increasingly difficult and the volume of new material exponentially higher. Recognising these challenges, the client sought to understand a national picture of operations around investigation and victim identification, and an assessment of how detection capabilities could be best deployed to support the broader online harms mission.
Approach
Our approach delivered broad national engagement within short timescales. Using our client’s and our own networks, we set up structured interviews, held a workshop, and created a national survey, achieving a high response rate. We engaged with over half of national units responsible for extracting and investigating material, as well as central supporting capabilities.
As part of this work we produced
A summary of national picture of findings, issues and options for use of detection tooling.
A summary of a common operational flow, key issues and decisions within it.
An assessment of intervention/hosting options.
A theory of change and high level roadmap for maturation and adoption of detection technology as operational capability
Impact
Our work covered critical groundwork of bringing an already tightly bound community further together to a common understanding of the challenges, including dispelling some myths and cutting through local differences to agree a common view of operations and the challenges
We were invited to play back our findings at senior briefings where a strong foundation was agreed with supporting consensus, giving a foundation for the next stages of operational trialling of technologies.