Police to expand use of AI voice recognition in sex crimes investigations

The police will expand its use of artificial intelligence voice recognition systems when investigating sexual crimes, the Korean National Police Agency said on Monday.

The AI voice recognition system will help investigators focus on interviewing victims, as it automatically records the interview. Investigators usually write down a victim statement while interviewing at the same time.

The agency plans to introduce the system to 38 police stations, the women and youth related investigation units of each provincial police agency and 32 Sunflower Centers -- a one-stop center for women and children who are victims of violence -- within this year. The police have run the system in 59 police stations since 2020 on a trial basis.

Police will enhance the system further by installing automatic voice recording and transcription of phone calls and improving the recognition of dialects.

Also, the police plan to launch a long-term project to develop an analysis tool for sexual exploitation of underage minors, which is called “online grooming.”

The police said there has been an increasing need to create a database of online grooming conversations on messaging apps and other platforms, because it is difficult for victims to recognize the risks of the situation until they reach the point of sexual assault. Also, there are no precedents for which conversations would fall under the category of online grooming, necessitating the need for such a database.

By Hwang Dong-hee (hwangdh@heraldcorp.com)