AI-Based Criminal Investigation: a game changer to privacy? 2025

Over the last few years, the development of so-called artificial intelligence (AI) has grown by leaps and bounds. AI has been a part of our personal daily lives and is also used in various sectors (e.g. health, education, law enforcement). This project is focusing on AI-based criminal investigations and its challenges to privacy. AI-based criminal investigation is not a new phenomenon, speaker identification started to be developed in the early 2000s. And still nowadays, AI-based instruments are at the centre of investigations, such as the detection of online child sexual abuse through images or video analysis, or chat-bots. This area is often under-represented in AI-related legal debates. Moreover, information, when accessible and condensed in supranational organisations’ reports, doesn’t precisely describe the state of the art of these tools and their challenges and perspectives regarding privacy. When it comes to crime investigation, privacy principles might be infringed under formal and contextual conditions for police work efficiency. However, owing to the rise of AI-based crime investigation, new forms of privacy infringements take place and need to be canalised in the design of these tools and of the law. Whereas in the past, research focused mainly on technological challenges, the debate has increasingly focused on ethical, social and legal issues within the last decade. AI's rapid development poses practical and conceptual challenges in law enforcement’s existing legal frameworks, such as data protection. European Union reached a political agreement on the draft artificial intelligence (AI) act in December 2023, closely followed by the finalisation of the draft framework convention of the Council of Europe and most recently the United Nations adopted a resolution backing efforts to ensure AI is safe. However, many questions remain: Are the proposed rules appropriate? Are they sufficiently precise and effective? On the other hand, is there no threat of rapid “obsolescence” of law? Are we taking proper account of the specific technical features to ensure that the regulation is appropriate? Are the ethical issues effectively taken into account when the new legal rules are developed? This conference, entitled “AI-based crime investigation: a game changer to privacy?” aims to provide an opportunity to compare the views and approaches of IT and Law researchers, as well as contributions from crime investigation professionals. With its interdisciplinary approach, the conference aims to take stock of the issues at stake within public and criminal bodies and to examine the potentially disruptive consequences and impacts inherent in its deployment. This conference's goal is to understand the concrete use of AI in criminal law investigation (crime investigation improvements), how it works from an IT point of view (what data are used, technical implementation of “privacy by design” principle), and what its legal challenges on privacy are.

The conference is organised in two parts, in Saarbrücken on 6–7 March 2025 and in Strasbourg on 15–16 May 2025. As a panellist, the speaker will present the topic she/he would have been selected for. As an active member of the discussion, the speaker would
have been informed in advance to debate after the presentation of a specific subject to be presented.

Scientific Committee
Yamina BOUADI, LL.M. (Law, University of Strasbourg)
Maria GAHN, LL.M. (Law, Universität des Saarlandes)
Scientific advisors
Prof. Dr. Dominik BRODOWSKI, LL.M. (UPenn)
Prof. Dr. Juliette LELIEUR