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the regime, millions of young Iranians flooded the internet to The most important AI technologies used in today’s modern
coordinate their activities, share viral content, and encourage OSINT solutions come mainly from the fields of natural language
others to join the campaign. It was the first time that the internet processing (NLP), image and video analysis, and robotic data
was flooded with citizen information about a major political collection (web crawling).
event. This was, of course, made possible by a combination of
smartphones, the internet, and social media. For example, 60% NLP applications allow algorithms or machine learning models FEATURE
of the blog links posted on Twitter during the first week of the to interpret human language use. This is particularly useful
protests were about Iranian politics. for analyzing social media and other data-rich sources. For
example, AI tools that use NLP can analyze social media posts,
This kind of increased online presence and activism has blogs, and news articles to identify trends, public opinion, or
given access to a whole new repository of freely available views on certain topics.
but strategically important information. At the same time, of
course, it has highlighted the value of such information and the In the field of image analysis, AI can detect and categorize
importance of technologies that can process it. objects, faces, and patterns in the images and videos being
processed. This capability is particularly useful in the areas of law
enforcement and intelligence, where the analysis of images and
OSINT vs. traditional intelligence videos is key. As an example, image analysis tools using AI can
The above suggests that the main difference between help identify suspicious activities or locations, even supporting
open source and classical intelligence is the data sources investigative work.
available. OSINT can only rely on information that has been
deliberately made public by its owners. This contrasts sharply Web crawling robots, or bots can automate web scraping by
with traditional intelligence, which may use, for example, continuously browsing the content available on the internet.
interception (signals intelligence – SIGINT), information from One such tool is Photon Scanner, which is available to anyone
human sources (human intelligence – HUMINT), or even and allows the collection, filtering, and automated downloading
analysis of satellite imagery (imagery intelligence – IMINT). of web URLs. This data can then be collected and processed
For obvious reasons, this information is often not public and for further analysis. OSINT tools that use bots therefore can
may require special licenses or technologies to access. automate the collection of information about companies,
individuals, or specific events, thus speeding up and simplifying
This difference is of course reflected not only in the sources the data collection process.
of data collection but also in its methods and purposes.
OSINT’s methods mostly include web search, social media It may seem marginal today, but the proliferation of synthetic
analysis, data mining, and natural language processing. content may also lead to the emergence of OSINT tools that
Traditional intelligence methods are much more diverse. can separate artificially generated or manipulated content from
They also include conducting covert operations, physical the “original”. Given that insights generated by open-source
surveillance, and establishing personal contacts with potential intelligence are worth exactly as much as they were generated
sources of information. These methods are often more time- from “clean” data, this is expected to be appreciated significantly
consuming and costly than those used for OSINT. soon.

It is also important to note that OSINT can be used in a wide As can be seen from the above, thanks to the impact of AI, OSINT
range of areas, including national security, law enforcement, is no longer just a supplementary source of information, but a
corporate intelligence, market research, journalism, and even to vital, stand-alone data collection and analysis method. Among
answer specific research questions. other things, its application significantly extends the scope and
depth of information collection. The continued development of
In contrast, traditional intelligence is mostly focused on AI and the integration of new technologies into OSINT tools is
government or military purposes. In terms of costs and resources, expected to further enhance the role and effectiveness of OSINT
OSINT is relatively cost-effective as it does not require expensive in the future.
technologies or specialized staff to access publicly available
data. In contrast, traditional intelligence methods, such as _____________________________________________________
SIGINT and IMINT, require significant resources, including Article extract from
advanced equipment and highly trained operators. https://constitutionaldiscourse.com/osint-and-ai-possibilities-
and-drawbacks/

Artificial Intelligence and OSINT István ÜVEGES is a researcher in Computer Linguistics at
As in many other areas, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based MONTANA Knowledge Management Ltd. and a researcher at
tools now play a key role in Open-Source Intelligence. the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, Political and Legal
AI-based tools have changed the way OSINT processes are Text Mining and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (poltextLAB).
mostly related to the way data is collected, analyzed, and His main interests include practical applications of Automation,
synthesized throughout the entire lifecycle (preparation, Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning), Legal Language
collection, processing, analysis, dissemination). (legalese) studies and the Plain Language Movement.

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