Bengaluru police to launch AI-based social media monitoring platform

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Bengaluru police will soon launch an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform to monitor and analyse social media and other digital platforms, which it says will improve the force’s ability to track misleading content.

The platform will improve the police's ability to monitor online activities, a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity. “For instance, once keywords are entered, AI will help identify communal, false, misleading, and threatening content on social media," the officer said.

The force has called tender for AI-based social media monitoring & analysis platform, “which will cater to users who need to monitor specific entities, such as organisations, brands, or topics”.

“It will also help manage monitoring campaigns, understand online conversations, assess sentiment, identify key influencers, and generate intelligence reports,” the tender document has said.

AI-driven insights will offer actionable recommendations and assist with crafting responses to online interactions.

Also read: Karnataka cops file 37 cases for 'derogatory' social media posts targeting politicians

The tool will offer automated data collection from a wide range of global and Indian digital sources, including major social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, as well as video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. It will also gather data from forums, news media, and public community boards.

The platform will have the ability to handle multiple sources of data, allows it to scale and adapt as future needs arise.

The system will enable monitoring of user-defined entities, track campaigns using specific keywords, and provide detailed analysis of social media accounts and user-generated content.

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The platform will also include advanced AI capabilities such as sentiment analysis, topic identification and author profiling.

It will classify content by impact level, engagement metrics, and sentiment, allowing authorities to quickly assess online narratives and track their evolution.

“The platform will provide a customisable dashboard for visualising key trends and metrics, including engagement trends, sentiment distribution, and platform performance comparisons. Reports generated by the system will dynamically populate with relevant data and visualisations, and users will be able to export them in formats like PDF”, it said.

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The platform will also have an Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) module, which will help investigators search for and analyse digital footprints of individuals, organisations, or other entities.

This will include profiling, footprint discovery, cross-platform linkage, and visualising entity networks. The module will play a crucial role in investigative and forensic efforts, particularly for identifying threats/high-interest individuals.

Also read: Karnataka government’s fact-check unit to combat fake news now operational

Karnataka information technology and biotechnology department’s fact-checking unit, information disorder tackling unit (IDTU), which was established to combat fake news and misinformation — especially on social media — has been operational since March 2024. A dedicated portal (satya.karnataka.gov.in) has also been launched.