Kash Patel Touts AI Overhaul of FBI Crime-Fighting Operations

In brief

• FBI Director Kash Patel wrote that the bureau has expanded its use of AI tools across investigations and internal operations.
• Patel claimed AI systems helped identify thousands of missing children, detect altered fingerprints, and process investigative data faster.
• Civil liberties advocates continue to warn that AI-powered surveillance and facial recognition tools can introduce bias and expand government monitoring powers.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a larger part of federal law enforcement operations, and FBI Director Kash Patel says the agency is using the technology to help locate missing children, identify suspects, and respond to threats more quickly.

In an opinion piece published Monday on the Fox News website, Patel wrote that the FBI launched a broad modernization effort after he and then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino took leadership roles at the bureau.

“When I was first sworn in as ninth director of the FBI, one of my top priorities was to modernize the bureau with new, cutting-edge technology that would allow us to better serve and protect the American people,” Patel wrote.

According to Patel, when he arrived, “the FBI was running on archaic patchwork systems without AI, effectively putting a 2025 car battery into a vehicle from 1985.” He said it was like a Commodore 64 when the agency needed to be a supercomputer.

Patel said the FBI created an AI working group, appointed a chief AI officer, launched an AI review board, and teamed with private-sector companies to modernize internal systems and investigative tools.

“Artificial intelligence is a huge part of that overhaul. When then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino and I arrived here at headquarters, AI had almost zero role at the FBI,” Patel wrote. “That had to change, so we got to work.”

Now, Patel said the FBI uses AI tools at its National Threat Operations Center to transcribe incoming calls, summarize threats, compare tips against existing cases, and rank leads by severity—a process he claimed recently helped agents stop a planned mass shooting at a North Carolina preschool.

“Last year alone, the FBI identified and located 6,300 missing kids, a 30% increase, and arrested 2,000 abusers, a 20% increase—largely thanks to these improvements,” he wrote.

“In a recent FBI Richmond case, the FBI’s Child Exploitation Operational Unit used facial recognition tools to save 8- and 12-year-old children from a would-be abuser, who will now spend 50 years in prison,” he added, further noting that the FBI used AI to process more than 75 terabytes of material collected after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.