Australian police building AI to translate emoji used by ‘crimefluencers’

Australia’s Federal Police (AFP) is working on an AI to interpret emojis and the slang used online by Generation Z and Generation Alpha, so it can understand them when they discuss crime online. AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett revealed the plan in a Wednesday in which she discussed “decentralised online crime networks and …

[AVR]

AI in court?

A LLM to translate emoji seems like it might be useful to the cops, but how would you introduce it as evidence? You can't get at the real reasoning as to what means what, and there's the ever-present risk of hallucinations.

[katrinab]

Re: AI in court?

Surely a dictionary would suffice? They are still communicating in a variant of English so there will be a 1:1 mapping with English words, unlike when translating from a different language.

[Yorick Hunt]

Re: AI in court?

Yes, but then they wouldn't be able to funnel money to their "Eh? Aye!" purveyors.

[AVR]

Re: AI in court?

Maybe not 1:1 with different subcultures involved, or differences in context. It should still be doable with a simpler system than a LLM though.

[ecarlseen]

ROFLMAO

Having seen things like this attempted before, one can predict that the results will be far more hilarious than useful.

Unless the use is mocking them. In which case they'll be very useful.

[Long John Silver]

Silly

What has become of traditional policing?

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Silly

It’s presumably off dealing with traditional criminals

[Just Enough]

Re: Silly

Bobbies on the beat, that's what needed! Send a uniform around to these villains' gaff, give them a traditional cuff around the ear. That'll teach them and put an end to their shenanigans. None of this mucking about on computers. Police should be wearing out shoe leather on the streets, not shining the seat of their trousers at desks!

It worked for Dixon of Dock Green, no reason I can think of why it can't work today!

[Dan 55]

Australian MP already did it first

Apparently there was no need for IT consultancies to get involved.

Senator delivers 'BRAINROT' speech in parliament: "Skibidi!" | 6 News

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Australian MP already did it first

We do have some doozies in our parliament but Sen, Payman is bit above average in the political sanity stakes.

I had no idea what skibidi† etc meant but searching found an article by an adult Elise Solé who clarified this and other terms ending with the suggestion: "Our prescription? Turn off the Wi-Fi."

_{† apparently doesn't mean anything in particular and definitely not an older female habituée of the Swiss snow fields.}

[An_Old_Dog]

Skibidi and Gen Zed -> Gen Alpha

I believe there are some "skibidis" in this rendition of "Minnie the Moocher" by Cab Caloway:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=250MMq0fTrU&pp=ygUaQmx1ZXMgQnJvdGhlcnMgQ2FiIENhbGF3YXk%3D

What is this thing about Gen Zed being followed by Gen Alpha? Have we run out of generation descriptors, and are now wrapping around, like to integer overflow, or like to the Americans re-using "old" Social Security numbers?

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Australian MP already did it first

older female habituée of the Swiss snow fields

New keyboard please.

[Anonymous Coward]

"AI tool that will interpret ... in encrypted communications" — huh ?

"developing a prototype AI tool that will interpret emojis and Gen Z and Alpha slang in encrypted communications"

Quoting Prof. Song: "Well that would be lovely, dear, but we can't, because it's completely impossible."

But there is more dodgy cryptography out there than dodgy universes so not completely impossible.

I would guess what was actually meant was that an non-Gen·Z/Gen·α AFP operative posing as a girl on an encrypted chat platform needs AI assistance to translate the Gen·Z patois. No actual circumvention of encryption required.

Still good luck with that — if AI is ever the answer then clearly you have asked the completely wrong question.

Rather ask what needs to done at a minimum to remove AI ever being needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Vicki Pollard available?

No but, yeah but…

[tiggity]

Mass surveillance perhaps

Given that police officers would be (maybe with a minimal amount of training to keep "up to date" on slang trends) be quite capable of examining comms & spotting crime related slang / emoji then you have to take account of an "AI" advantage being speed, in that a lot of data can be scanned quickly.

Thus "AI" analysis is well suited for large scale scanning - so you do wonder if real reason is to do large scale (not precisely targeted on possible suspects but a dragnet covering just about anyone) analysis

[GNU Enjoyer]

>allegedly refused to hand over his passwords for his crypto wallet, which is a Commonwealth offence that carries a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment

Why is it a commonwealth offense to decline to self incriminate or make it possible for the police to plant things (but they of course would never do anything like that)?

[AVR]

“We knew if we couldn’t open the crypto wallet, and if the alleged offender was sentenced, upon release he would leave prison a multi-millionaire – all from the profits of organised crime.”

If the concern was about police planting stuff then he could check what was there before getting access, maybe get a lawyer to witness that. It doesn't sound like they cracked it instantly.

[GNU Enjoyer]

How an alleged criminal allegedly has a crypto wallet

that is allegedly full of cryptocurrency from the profits of organized crime isn't a legitimate reason to demand self incrimination.

"an image on his device displaying random numbers and words. The numbers were divided into groups of six and there were more than 50 variations of the number groups" is odd, but such image alone is not evidence of the existence of a cryptocurrency wallet unless the numbers can be decoded into a valid wallet format for a specific cryptocurrency (many people do have images of random numbers and those people should not be jailed for 10 years because they can't provide a password for a nonexistent cryptocurrency wallet).

>“Our digital forensics team determined it could be related to a crypto wallet

- Could is not enough - it is entirely possible that that image is not related to a cryptocurrency wallet.

- The "accused allegedly refused to hand over his passwords for his crypto wallet" doesn't state what he said - stating truthfully that the image is unrelated to cryptocurrency or truthfully that you forgot the password (this happens a lot), or even handing over the single password for the wallet (but not multiple as demanded), are all things that could be taken as a refusal to hand over "the passwords".

Even assuming there is in fact a cryptocurrency wallet full of a large amount of profits from organised crime, there are 2 ways to deal with that that won't risk the conviction of innocents;

- Destroy all copies of the wallet, thus denying any profit from such organised crime (but if you do that, you don't get the money) - although that wouldn't be fair to innocents (but at least such innocents life won't be screwed with a conviction).

- Wait for him to be released and cash out and buy an expensive house and car etc and then get him with tax evasion and dealing in the proceeds of crime.

But, could it be that immediate profit (need to cover that budget and go on those training courses that definitely aren't holidays) is regarded as far more important than avoiding convicting innocent people?

>If the concern was about police planting stuff then he could check what was there before getting access, maybe get a lawyer to witness that

The police gained access to his computers and could have done anything - a lawyer witnessing what's on the device afterwards wouldn't help much.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

The law is on the books. The why is in Hansard.