AI unmasks dark slang used by drug traffickers, ‘secret’ words to evade police

Researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) able to identify the obscure jargon used by criminalssurfacing new words and terms used by individuals or organizations to lead illicit activities. Particularly relevant is the role in identifying “encrypted” communications of drug traffickers And drug dealers on social networkswho use and update a vast repertoire of obscure jargons to evade the controls of police. With innovative AI it will no longer be so easy for criminals to hide in plain sight. The algorithms of the new artificial intelligence are so efficient that not only do they have superior accuracy 7 percent compared to other models already available, but they are also able to identify a huge amount of terms previously unknown to law enforcement. In an analysis conducted together with several police officials, it was in fact demonstrated that the 93 percent of slang words detected by AI by analyzing i posts published on social media He was unknown to the police.

The new AI was developed by a Japanese research team led by scientists from the Graduate School of Information Sciences and Technologies of the University of Electrocommunications (UEC), who collaborated closely with colleagues from various departments of the Japanese National Police Agency. Among those involved are the Criminal Affairs Office and the Organized Crime Countermeasures Division. Researchers coordinated by professors Takuro Hada and Akihiko Ohsuga have developed the new AI by creating algorithms capable of detecting slang words of type composed. In practice, combinations of two or more words used to refer to drugs, weapons or other elements linked to illicit activities. The authors of the study referred to terms such as “Green-Crack” or “Pineapple Chunk” used by drug traffickers to make communications about specific drugs and the words “yami baito”, used in Japan for part-time work in the black and/or linked to criminal activities.

Professor Hada and colleagues explained that drug trafficking is constantly growing and has developed into a significant social problem. Police continually scour the web for “secret words” to identify illicit activity, but clearly once detected, obscure jargons quickly become obsolete and criminals are constantly developing new encoded messages. To unmask them in advance, AI is considered an excellent tool, managing to detect anomalies from the analysis of enormous quantities of data. The new system is considered particularly efficient since it is able to find even composite words. “Traditional methods have difficulty detecting obscure slang when it consists of multiple words, because most text analysis tools automatically break down sentences into smaller word units,” the study authors explain in a press release.

“The new AI system overcomes this problem by identifying pairs of words that frequently appear together in similar contexts. By analyzing large datasets of social media posts, AI can recognize when two or more words form obscure slang, even if it is a recently emerged term,” explain Hada and colleagues. Thanks to such an automated system, law enforcement will have a much easier time identifying illicit activities on social networks and the criminals who use them, making the web safer. The details of the research “Detection of Compound-Type Dark Jargons Using Similar Words” were published in a Japanese specialized scientific journal.