The Role of AI in OSINT Analytics: How Open-Source Data Gathering Automation Works?

OSINT and AI are two most popular and well-known trends of modernity.

These two types of technology are probably familiar to anyone who has an internet connection, especially for those, who are active web users.

However, most people might misunderstand the whole idea and phenomenon of both solutions. So, we would like to discuss all the benefits as well as challenges of adopting such technologies like OSINT and AI, why and when should you use them, and how this combination will change the future of our world. Let’s start from the very beginning.

Open-Source Intelligence Explained

OSINT stands for open-source intelligence.

The name speaks for itself, meaning that the main principle of OSINT is to gather and analyze data, shared in open sources like social media posts, news articles, or other public sources on the Internet.

The type of data, as well as its specifics, varies, depending on the final goal of using this data. For instance, it can be personal information on the particular individual written in text format, or a video file of a certain event, caught on camera.

Mostly, OSINT became well-known in the context of the russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which significantly influenced the IT sector. However, truth be told, OSINT was commonly used by various journalists and enthusiasts far before 2022. Probably one of the most significant events in the field of OSINT analysis is the full-fledged investigation of the MH17 tragedy, performed by the bellingcat intelligence community.

Thanks to open-source tools for intelligence, bellingcat analysts managed to gather different types of data, related to this tragic event, to investigate and figure out whom to blame in such a terroristic attack. Having photos and videos, posted by different bystanders, investigators managed to perform a full-scale investigation, which included the identification of the particular BUK missile launcher, its route from russia to Ukraine and backward, and identifying people who took part in the attack.

How to Use OSINT?

At this moment, you might ask yourself why you need to learn about the technology, which is designed for journalists. The answer is simple.

Frankly speaking, OSINT is just a methodology, which defines how to operate big data, gather it from open sources and analyze it. Journalists were among the first ones, who successfully adopted OSINT practice to serve their professional needs.

However, today the context is rapidly changing, and more business companies are learning OSINT and finding ways to use it for their own business needs. Thus, it's only a matter of time before companies will use OSINT on an everyday basis.

OSINT can become a powerful tool for a wide range of industry-specific businesses. For instance, it can bring value to the eCommerce field by providing additional ways of sales forecasting.

Besides, gathering large amounts of data and its analysis can help to improve numerous aspects of any business product. For example, it can be used to analyze the current market context, learn valuable insights about your rivals, differences between you two, your products or services, etc. Alternatively, you can use OSINT practices to create a more detailed and accurate portrait of your target audience, including its needs, age, location, etc.

Eventually, the overall OSINT is such a broad methodology, that it can be used in countless scenarios, according to your needs and ideas. Yet, it is going to change some aspects of business.

Even nowadays, most modern business operations and strategies are highly dependent on input data, and most important decisions are data-driven. This is why it is hard to deny the fact, that such data gathering and analysis tools and methodologies as OSINT best practices are going to impact the future of data-driven decision-making.

How Does OSINT Work?

For a better illustration of how OSINT works, let’s examine some case studies.

As was said before, one of the most important fields, where OSINT is already used regularly, is journalism. The reason is extremely simple: with limited or even no insight information, analysts can make full-scale investigations by simply gathering and combining different facts posted online and making their judgments, based on the final results of such combinations.

Additionally, there is a variety of organizations, that use OSINT to fight political corruption and bring more transparency to social, political, and business life. One of the best illustrations is YouControl, an analytical system, and database, that gathers information on almost all Ukrainian companies, their activity, beneficiaries, etc.

As a result, it helps to check your potential business partner or contactor, increases the fraud detection capability, and allows you to build more transparent business relations. But how exactly does it work and where does it take information from?

OSINT Crawler Bot

One of the most important technologies, used for OSINT is a bot. Bots are commonly used for process automation, especially in terms of OSINT.

Do not confuse them with chatbots like ChatGPT, or other visual assistants, because they are designed and used for slightly different purposes. Still, there is a possibility to train such technologies and teach them how to use OSINT.

The main type of bots, used for OSINT data gathering is similar to web crawlers, robotized software, that constantly surfs the web and performs internet indexing. To cut a long story short, both these bots are constantly browsing the World Wide Web, looking for particular data, which is saved and processed for particular purposes.

Thanks to such a primitive, yet efficient solution, OSINT analysts get a chance to automate the process of data crawling and gathering, switching to its processing. However, even data processing and information filtering can be automated with the use of modern artificial intelligence practices like natural language processing or simply NLP models.

Data Storing and Sorting

The next step after you have defined your sources like national databases of registered companies, and enabled the process of data gathering with the use of a crawling bot like Photon, you need to sort the data and define where to store it.

Once again, modern machine learning solutions are proposing new sophisticated solutions. For instance, you can predefine your bot what exact data to look for, and which it should skip or get rid of.

When it comes to storing the information, the most obvious solution is to choose between SQL or NoSQL databases. Data sorting can be performed with the use of a database, at the gathering stage by setting up the crawler bot, or you can combine both scenarios if needed.

Data Analysis Process

Afterward, when you have your data gathered and sorted, you can proceed with its analysis and draw your conclusions.

This step is harder to define in detail or divide into steps because the process of analyzing mainly depends on the person, who performs this analysis.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in OSINT

Finally, we can discuss the potential role of AI in the open-source intelligence sphere.

Frankly speaking, the potential of AI in this niche is significant. At the moment, most OSINT investigations are possible thanks to different bots and crawlers, that help to automate the process of gathering data and sorting it out.

AI-Powered Tools for Process Automation

OSINT can be performed without the use of ML-powered solutions, i.e. manually by humans. Yet, the scale of such intelligence will hardly compete with the one, that uses automation.

To add some more, some modern AI-powered OSINT software is used for such complex tasks as identity identification, which is hard, or even impossible in certain circumstances for a human.

To cut a long story short, modem AI solutions like ChatGPT can be used for a wide range of tasks in terms of OSINT. For instance, except for data gathering, it is already possible to use modern AI models for visual recognition of objects or person identification, speech recognition, speech-to-text transformation, text translation, and many others.

Improved Accuracy and Impartiality

Another obvious, still significant advantage of using artificial intelligence for open-source information processing is the fact, that it makes more accurate calculations and can quickly find and identify required information in the array of data, compared to human beings.

As a result, it can be used to speed up the research by finding required pieces of information in no time, allowing it to save human resources and redirect them for further analysis.

Besides, AI is a great tool for data-driven prediction making. Just like in the case of sales forecasting, artificial intelligence can be used to analyze big data and look for patterns, templates, or other regularities. As a result, it can narrow down the variety of scenarios to consider and pay more attention to the most possible cases.

Manual vs Automated Data Gathering

Even though OSINT is not always performed with the use of AI or other automation tools like crawler bots potentially can be completed in a manual form by a single person, it is hard to deny all the benefits of using AI for OSINT automation.

Additionally, the power of such synergy lies in the fact, that OSINT software does not require such scalable and complex solutions as advanced AI, based on the NLP model and with capabilities of visual or speech recognition, even though the more modern artificial intelligence is - the better result can be achieved.

Still, it is possible to use even the most primitive forms of AI like crawlers or chatbots to significantly improve and boost the process of open-source intelligence by automating the data-gathering process. In some cases, you won’t even need any OSINT technologies for your investigation, in other - you can fully automate your OSINT activities.

Talking about the need for OSINT reports and their importance in terms of any business activity except for journalism, it is possible to tell, that many companies have already adopted some OSINT practices for their business needs.

For instance, it can help to improve fraud detection and risk assessment in terms of any activity, which is especially important in terms of FinTech industry. Judging from our own experience, more and more financial institutions and businesses are interested in the adaptation of such OSINT software with AI on board.

• BlackBird.ai is among the most recent cases, we can name. It is a platform, used for content analysis and misinformation detection. Our development team developed this software product from scratch and had a chance to work with the most modern and unique solutions in the field.
• DataBank project is another great example of OSINT software, used in FinTech. This application has a slightly different purpose and is designed for internal usage. It has a custom-made scrapper tool, used to crawl and scrape data from desired sources in a background mode, constantly updating defined data. Crawled information is used for risk assessment and potential fraud detection by gathering data on the bank clients and analyzing it.

Finally, one of the best reasons why you should consider using OSINT for business is the fact, that it is very easy to develop at least the most basic level of OSINT process automation by creating or even integrating SaaS chatbots or other software. As a result, your business intelligence and analytics specialists will have access to more data and, as a result, will get a chance to make better analyses and predictions.

Developing OSINT AI with Incora

Either way, when it comes to adopting OSINT tech, you will need the help of niche-experienced developers, who are familiar with such types of technologies and can advise you on which approach to choose and why.

Despite the variety of OSINT SaaS solutions on the internet, as well as OSINT service companies like Social Links, the best way to make an informed choice - is to contact an experienced software development company, that is familiar with such types of technologies.

For instance, here at Incora, we have some recent case studies on similar software projects and we will happily share our experience with you and advise you which approach is the best in your specific case.

All you need is to sign a contact form, and our specialists will get in touch with you as soon as possible.