KASH PATEL: AI is helping the new FBI find missing kids and stop mass shooters faster

When I was first sworn in as ninth director of the FBI, one of my top priorities was to modernize the bureau with new, cutting-edge technology that would allow us to better serve and protect the American people. When I arrived, the FBI was running on archaic patchwork systems without AI, effectively putting a 2025 car battery into a vehicle from 1985. Our infrastructure was a Commodore 64 when it needed to be a supercomputer. No more Band-Aids on gunshot wounds. Wholesale change was necessary.

In the past year, I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made under President Trump’s leadership. We have rebuilt and revamped the FBI’s infrastructure across the enterprise, helping the bureau achieve record-breaking results in crushing violent crime and defending the homeland, while providing historic transparency.

Artificial intelligence is a huge part of that overhaul. When then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino and I arrived here at headquarters, AI had almost zero role at the FBI. That had to change, so we got to work. We immediately led the way by setting up an AI working group to evaluate how we could accelerate modernization, getting input from field leaders on the ground in your communities. We appointed a chief AI officer and established an AI Review Board to streamline our efforts. We created an AI Champions Program to identify advocates across the bureau. Maybe most importantly, we created direct partnerships with private-sector industry leaders to rebuild our infrastructure and bring in AI on a broad scale.

FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL SAYS BUREAU RAMPING UP AI TO COUNTER DOMESTIC, GLOBAL THREATS

AI is central to what we do. It is helping us identify victims of child exploitation, arrest and convict predators, and more. Last year alone, this FBI identified and located 6,300 missing kids, a 30% increase, and arrested 2,000 abusers, a 20% increase — largely thanks to these improvements. In a recent FBI Richmond case, the FBI’s Child Exploitation Operational Unit used facial recognition tools to save 8- and 12-year-old children from a would-be abuser, who will now spend 50 years in prison.

AI is central to what we do. It is helping us identify victims of child exploitation, arrest and convict predators, and more.

This FBI now uses new AI tools to generate call transcriptions, provide concise synopses and even help correlate contacts with other received complaints. When someone calls into NTOC — the National Threat Operations Center, our 911 center — AI tools generate a transcript of the call, draft an effective summary of the threat and immediately scan our database for comparisons to other open threat lines. Every tip also receives a lead value to surface the highest threat-related calls for Threat Intake Examiners. This specific threat intake process helped the FBI quickly act and stop an attacker plotting a mass shooting at a North Carolina preschool.

Fingerprint matching is one of the most common methods the FBI uses to identify individuals. Some adversaries try to manipulate their prints to obscure their identities by burning, cutting or biting their fingertips to remove ridge detail and make it difficult or impossible to make a match. Because fingerprint matching is an automated process, altered fingerprints were being missed. CJIS — the Criminal Justice Information Services Division, our data hub — integrated an AI-enabled, real-time altered fingerprint detection capability. In 2025, this new solution detected 34 altered fingerprint identities, ultimately leading to the positive identification and arrest of wanted persons, drug traffickers and fraudsters.

We’re also using AI to facilitate rapid translations of large volumes of text, audio and video, and to triage terabytes of data. In the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, the FBI had more than 75 terabytes of data to review, with more information coming in every day, including more than 75 search warrant returns. For perspective, a single search warrant return can contain 180,000 messages. It would take six or seven analysts working seven days a week for four or five weeks to review a single search warrant return. The FBI routinely has thousands of audio files and texts to review over the course of a single case. Our current models translate with roughly 80% accuracy, so our linguists can home in on the 20% that requires a human touch. 

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We are not replacing humans; we’re supplementing them, sharpening their focus and expediting the pace of our investigations. Collecting data to sit in storage is like keeping Babe Ruth on the bench permanently.

We’re identifying and arresting more fraudsters, scammers and drug traffickers who try to hide their identities, thanks to AI. Through cooperative research and development agreements with the private sector, the FBI is advancing our deepfake detection systems in support of these investigations.

Equally important, AI is helping this FBI be more accountable to the taxpayer by applying it to business operations across the bureau and getting maximum value out of your money. With the help of our Enterprise AI assistant, this FBI cut $300 million in spending and identified more than $1.2 billion in contract ceiling savings.

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These are just a few of the ways artificial intelligence has allowed this FBI to meet the mission. Under the Trump administration’s leadership, this FBI is now a faster, more efficient and more accountable crime-fighting machine thanks to the implementation of modern technology. This FBI has desperately needed these transformational changes, but prior leadership refused to spend the time and resources, kneecapping our abilities. That changed immediately under my leadership and will continue.

The new FBI — the greatest law enforcement agency on Earth — is now providing our team the tools they need to execute the dangerous mission we ask them to perform every day: safeguarding America. And thanks to the brave personnel using those tools, America is safer than we’ve been in decades.

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