Artificial Intelligence in Innovation of Investigative Interviews Speech-To-Text and Text Analysis Using Machine Learning

The overarching goal of AI4INTERVIEWS is to significantly increase the efficiency of police interviews by designing, developing, exploring, and using AI solutions for speech-to-text and text analysis. Every year, Norwegian police conduct thousands of different types of interviews. Generally, these are transcribed manually in whole or in part, or a summary of the interviews is written. This is very time-consuming and often tedious work for investigators and police personnel. The number of interviews related to crimes such as organized crime, violence, child abuse, and financial crime is expected to continuously increase. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly contributed to the increase in the number of sexual assaults on children online. Furthermore, Europe is the global epicenter hosting images of child sexual abuse. At the same time, pedophiles are becoming more advanced, sophisticated, and sadistic. Machine learning (ML) has revolutionized the fields of speech-to-text and text analysis. Although such technology has existed for some time, it is only recently that researchers have developed deep learning models suitable for language comprehension tasks. ML for Norwegian has already existed for some time and continues to develop at an incredible pace in the future. In 2023, ChatGPT and large language models took the world by storm. ML and large language models are very likely to continue developing at an incredible pace. This offers the police very exciting and promising opportunities to support investigators with analyses and summaries of large datasets.

Every year, the Norwegian police carry out thousands of investigative interviews of different types. Generally, these are either transcribed manually (dialog reports) in full or partially, or reports are written as a summary of the interviews. This is very time-consuming and tedious work for the investigators and police officers. Furthermore, the number of investigative interviews related to crimes like organised crime, violence, child abuse and economic crime, is expected to increase continuously. Machine learning (ML) has been revolutionizing the fields of speech-to-text (STT) and text analysis (TA). While such technology has existed for some time, it has only been recently that scientists have developed deep learning models appropriate for language understanding tasks, and it has only been recently that they could effectively train them with massive amounts of data, thus producing far more practical models than what has existed in the past. ML for Norwegian has existed for some time already and is continuing to develop at an incredible speed. Further, using ML to perform text analysis of the interview text files has promising and exciting opportunities to support an investigation of crime. For instance, ML can be used to find patterns and contexts related to places, names, organizations and events. The design of this project combines innovation and applied research, builds upon a “building-blocks”, experiences and expands the scope from an ongoing pre-study within applied research. The pre-study started in September 2020 as a cooperation between NTNU CCIS and Oslo Police District. We have so far learned that “speech-to-text” for Norwegian already exists in use in the market with inspiring results that have been found very promising by the Norwegian police. Thus, our research focuses on assessing the readiness of speech-to-text technology for police work, and also develops and assesses a user interface for such tools that the police would be ready to adopt.