AI Cops and Digital Decoys: The Rise of Pre-Crime Personas

Imagine a future where police don’t knock on your door; they slide into your DMs pretending to be a lonely baker or a 14-year-old gamer. That future is already here.

AI-generated personas are being deployed by U.S. law enforcement to pose as college protesters, sex workers, and minors, without making a single arrest to date. A startup called Massive Blue is selling “Overwatch,” a tool that generates lifelike characters to lure suspects across platforms like Discord and Signal.

Funded with anti-trafficking grants, these bots blur legal boundaries by targeting vaguely defined “radicals” with no public transparency. Consider what this reveals:

• Overwatch bots mimic real people, complete with fake backstories.
• Personas include “AI pimp,” “protester,” and “child trafficking bait.”
• No arrests, despite $360K+ in taxpayer-funded contracts.

As we race to digitize safety, we risk automating bias and surveillance. When AI merges with undercover policing and skips judicial oversight, who gets protected—and who gets profiled?

Read the full article on Wired.

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💡 We're entering a world where intelligence is synthetic, reality is augmented, and the rules are being rewritten in front of our eyes.

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