Key tools and approaches for using AI in OSINT and investigations

Geolocation can be labor intensive. You might view a video frame by frame to look for landmarks and other location clues, or extract dozens of screenshots to run through reverse image search engines, among many other steps.

Unless you posses the memory and/or ability to travel the world like Rainbolt to learn about local highways, streetscapes, and landscapes, you probably can’t identify locations by sight alone. But AI can learn from Google StreetView, OpenStreetMaps, and other sources to potentially become proficient at geolocation.

GeoSpy is a free tool to identify the location of an uploaded photo. Here’s more on how it works. There’s also a plan for a paid version, GeoSpy Pro, which will analyze large sets of images and generate insights from the data.

What else? Try Picarta and this Geolocation Estimation tool. There’s also a model on HuggingFace that can analyze an image, though my initial testing found that it didn’t attempt geolocation. HuggingFace is also home to a model “that can answer questions about small details in high-resolution images.”