Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm, incorporating itself knee-deep in various aspects of our society seemingly overnight, for better or for worse. In the case of Australia's police, the intention is pure, and the goal is to prevent crime or catch suspects more effectively with the use of an AI that can translate modern, online slang, in particular, emojis. Young adults who are part of hate groups on social media that spread violent rhetoric and often act on it — who Australian police refer to as "crimefluencers" — are the main target of this new strategy.
According to The Register, Australia Federal Police (AFP) commissioner Krissy Barrett spoke to the press today, highlighting how many Gen Z and Gen Alpha individuals are lured into these spaces, pushed to perform an act of tribute just to get in, such as recording self-harm. Once part of these decentralized communities, the crimefluencers coordinate real-world attacks using emojis that are difficult to interpret for investigators.
"They are ‘crimefluencers’, and are motivated by anarchy and hurting others, with most of their victims pre-teen or teenage girls," said AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett.
So, how does artificial intelligence help here? While we don't have exact details, AFP says it’s developing a “prototype AI tool that will interpret emojis and Gen Z and Alpha slang in encrypted communications and chat groups,” according to commissioner Barrett. It would likely have to be a multimodal natural language model (NLM) designed to interpret semantics as distinct, individual units, then use context awareness to determine whether something is an actual clue or just harmless slang.
For instance, the skull emoji traditionally represents death or murder, but these days on the internet, it’s gained more notoriety as “dying of laughter.” The pizza emoji could literally mean pizza — or, in some circles, act as code for a drug drop. This is where language embeddings come into play. If the model sees “(pizza) drop tonight?” paired with a blood emoji or certain slang terms, it could separate ordinary messages from ones actually worth flagging.
Since these groups have no unified leadership but share common interests in violence, nihilism, and sadism, with some of them even being Neo-Nazis, simply tracking down the people in charge is not going to reveal the chain beneath. The community has no center, so it has to be monitored on an individual basis, treating every possible threat with the utmost caution, and quickly working to prevent it.
The AI is just one part of that; several other efforts are ongoing with different teams exploring ways to more effectively combat new-age crime. AFP has already joined forces with the "Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group" — consisting of agencies from the US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand — and has already arrested multiple suspects aged between 17 and 20, out of the 59 total that were flagged.
Barrett also shared several cases where good ol' forensics still outsmarted computers, shining light on a recent crypto-laundering bust where a data scientist manually cracked an encoded recovery phrase worth millions after they spotted a pattern AI had missed. “While computer power is essential,” she said, “it’s not always as creative and innovative as a human.”
AFP is also experimenting with unorthodox forensics techniques, like trying to use cell phones buried with dead bodies to determine the age, cause, and method of death. The main goal is to estimate how long the body has been underground, and this is a collaborative effort with the University of Technology Sydney. Introducing the AI tool is simply the next phase of Australia's vision to control crime on a larger scale, folding in more tech and science as crime naturally continues to evolve.
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