Kelly Ihme
AI is everywhere, and its presence interferes with modern intelligence operations. AI is on your phone, in your browser, embedded in applications, even on your smart watch. For most of us, AI is an additive, streamlining tasks and speeding research. For open-source intelligence professionals, AI and AI-generated material potentially impact work in two ways: cognitive load and tradecraft.
Numerous articles cover the benefits and dangers of AI, the challenges of integration across professions, and the growing need for AI literacy within the national security space. While possibilities with AI seem endless, one area needing/requiring more attention is its impact on publicly available information (PAI). There is a flood of AI-generated images, videos, and text content our adversaries intentionally post as people, places, and events to misrepresent, falsify, or completely invent those situations and persons. Not all AI content is intended to deceive. Some AI-generated content is entertainment and spreads the gamut from funny to annoying. Within the intelligence space, the spread of AI content, whether from adversary or ally, is a risk factor. The impact of AI in information operations focuses largely on harnessing the technology to assist with massive data analytics and advantages for decision makers, but one area that remains underexplored is the threat of AI to the public information that our open-source analysts rely on.
Open-Source intelligence (OSINT) “is intelligence derived exclusively from publicly or commercially available information that addresses specific intelligence priorities, requirements, or gaps.” Examples of OSINT sources include social media, public records and websites, news media, and internet images and videos. With the rise of social media, PAI is particularly valuable in gauging sentiment and monitoring events, tracking trends, establishing patterns of behavior, or gaining insight in ways that complement and enhance traditional intelligence methods. OSINT provides leaders with a clearer understanding of an operational environment that enhances decision-making. Although AI content is problematic for creative professions like photography, it also challenges our intelligence analysts and current tradecraft methods. The rise of AI-generated content, particularly photorealistic images, social media posts, and videos, clouds the public information space, adding layers of complexity and noise to PAI and increasing the cognitive load on OSINT analysts. The addition of AI content complicates cataloguing and disseminating OSINT reports to ensure intelligence customers trust those reports.
The Polluted Digital Environment
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