Solving Crimes in the AI Era: The Need for Open, Interoperable Evidence Systems
When a crime occurs, it incapacitates victims, stuns entire communities, and sets into motion the legal and investigatory process of piecing a puzzle together that brings criminals to justice and closure to victims. In today’s world, the process of solving crimes increasingly relies on access to vast amounts of audio and video data. The number of data sources involved in investigations is staggering – surveillance cameras, business security footage, automated license plate readers (APLRs), body-worn cameras, 911 calls, social media, and bystander videos, to name a few.
While the availability of this data is an advantage, it also presents significant challenges. Investigators will spend countless hours collecting, organizing, reviewing, and analyzing the evidence to build timelines and identify suspects, all while racing against mounting pressure from communities that demand faster response times and higher crime solve rates – especially when it involves violence or drugs.
One of the primary obstacles investigators face is that the current law enforcement technology ecosystem is not designed to efficiently integrate, process, and analyze large amounts of diverse data. Evidence-collection systems are proprietary, focusing only on their own generated media rather than optimizing for third-party integration. As a result, investigators are left to manually piece together information from multiple vendors, such as body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, APLRs, jail calls, cell phone extractions, CCTV footage, and more. Attempting to organize data from disparate silos leads to increased costs and extends the time required to solve cases, leading to frustration and burnout among investigators and prolonged pain for victims.
Recognizing these challenges early, Veritone became a champion of interoperability for the public sector. We developed a robust, open partner AI ecosystem that ingests evidentiary data from dozens of third-party applications and tools into a centralized hub and workflow platform for processing and analysis. The ecosystem, known as Veritone’s Intelligent Digital Evidence Management System (iDEMS), is a secure, comprehensive, and purpose-built applications suite for investigators and public sector agencies. iDEMS is built on aiWARE, Veritone’s open AI-based platform that intelligently orchestrates multiple best-of-breed cognitive and generative AI models within a single cloud-based solution to process, organiz,e and analyze massive volumes of audio and video data – far beyond human cognitive capabilities.
Problems with “walled garden” technology
As the volume of digital evidence continues to grow, it is critical that investigators have the necessary tools to efficiently organize and analyze it. Legacy systems are no longer adequate for handling today’s complexities. Without a fully integrated, open system, investigators risk lower case clearance rates, increased staff burnout, and higher operational costs – factors that ultimately hinder justice and community trust.
Traditional evidence-collection systems further slow down investigations by requiring investigators to navigate between disconnected applications. Digital evidence is being collected from more devices, sensors, and inputs than ever before, and closed systems prevent sharing of information between technologies. For example, when surveillance footage and bodycam footage come from different manufacturers, investigators are forced to get creative on how they piece together the footage so its integrity remains intact. This challenge will only intensify as technology continues to evolve. By 2030, there are expected to be a staggering 40 billion IoT devices – including connected cars, doorbell cameras, pet cameras, and home assistants – will be in use worldwide. Public safety agencies must adapt their technologies to keep pace with this influx of data to ensure crimes are solved efficiently.
The burden of manually reviewing evidence from disparate systems also contributes to staff burnout. Tedious tasks, like watching dozens of hours of video to find a single person or object, reduce productivity and increase overtime costs. In a climate where public safety agencies are experiencing a drastic decrease in the number of recruits – up to 60 percent in some areas – protecting existing personnel is critical to maintaining public safety.
Further, when systems don’t allow for proper integration, agencies are forced to work with multiple technology vendors in a fragmented manner, leading to higher costs. With government budgets under increasing scrutiny and public safety funding facing potential cuts, agencies must ensure that every dollar spent delivers the highest measurable ROI.
The power of an open AI ecosystem
Veritone’s iDEMS solution prioritizes public safety over market competition by featuring an open architecture that integrates all types of evidentiary data from any source. From input to analysis to sharing, iDEMS provides a comprehensive suite of tools that enhance investigative workflows and solve critical cases in a secure and compliant environment.
iDEMS is powered by aiWARE, Veritone’s leading enterprise AI platform, which leverages hundreds of cognitive and generative AI models to rapidly process large datasets in multiple formats, including audio and video. By combining this processing power with our expansive partner ecosystem, iDEMS enables investigators to consolidate digital evidence from disparate sources into a unified, holistic view of any investigation.
Currently, the iDEMS ecosystem supports data from:
- Device extraction tools (like cell phones)
- Home security systems
- Drone manufacturers
- Body-worn and in-car camera companies
- Video management systems
- Investigations and forensics providers
- Gunfire detection systems
- Gun crime intelligence
- License plate readers
- Secure data link protocol providers
- e-discovery platforms
- Freedom Of Information Act (“FOIA”) providers
- Hyperscaler’s cloud storage platforms
Veritone is continuously expanding this ecosystem, ensuring that agencies can seamlessly integrate data from any source to enhance public safety efforts.
Once indexed, all data in iDEMS becomes easily searchable and offers AI-powered applications to analyze evidence and surface critical insights that might otherwise be easily missed.
Key capabilities include:
- Tracking persons and vehicles of interest across all video footage with advanced AI tracking technology;
- Transforming video clips into LPR hits with advanced OCR processing;
- Automatically comparing suspects that appear in video and photographic evidence against a booking database to review potential leads from repeat offenders;
- Redacting personally identifiable information (PII) from evidentiary data to protect community members; and
- Easily conducting keyword searches or object detection across vast datasets to quickly locate critical evidence.
The result is more crimes solved through enhanced operational efficiency and streamlined workflows that accelerate investigations and crime solving – all within a secure and compliant environment. As a leader in AI for the public sector, Veritone ensures its solutions exceed security standards and can be deployed on an AWS CJIS-compliant cloud or Microsoft Azure’s secure government cloud, providing both security and scalability.
Why an open approach matters
Proprietary evidence-collection systems and closed data feeds create unnecessary obstacles for investigators, ultimately undermining the positive impact of public safety agencies. While healthy competition in the technology space can drive innovation, it should never come at the expense of investigative success or community safety.
As leaders in human-centered AI solutions for the public sector, Veritone upholds the ethical responsibility to prioritize public safety over profit-driven competition. Our commitment to an open ecosystem is rooted in our mission to equip investigators with the tools they need to improve case clearance rates and deliver justice more efficiently.
Whether agencies choose Veritone’s award-winning applications and solutions or select a different vendor, our priority remains the same: increasing public safety by reducing the time and effort required to solve crimes. By fostering trust, transparency, and efficiency, we empower public safety agencies to better serve their communities.
Join the open AI movement
The future of public safety depends on interoperability, efficiency, and collaboration. By adopting an open AI ecosystem, agencies can enhance their investigative capabilities, reduce staff burnout and maximize the benefits their communities receive. Join Veritone in the movement toward open, AI-driven public safety solutions and help shape a safer world.