AI is transforming law enforcement, offering new tools for policing but also enabling advanced criminal tactics that challenge traditional methods. The global nature of crime, including cyber threats, trafficking, and terrorism, calls for innovative solutions as LEAs face vast data volumes and increasingly sophisticated criminal activities. AI has raised concerns with deepfakes—highly realistic but fake audio, video, or text that can depict individuals saying or doing things they never did. Deepfakes pose serious risks, impacting politics, economy, and social trust. Examples include fabricated videos of political figures and voice-cloned audio for financial fraud, often spread through social networks to deceive and defraud on a large scale. Forensic institutes and courts struggle to differentiate authentic evidence from AI fabrications, especially in cases involving national security. Despite promising detection research, existing methods fall short as current models rely on limited, non-diverse datasets and produce results with limited legal admissibility. The DETECTOR initiative aims to address these challenges, supporting LEAs and forensic experts in analyzing altered media. It offers an integrated solution through cross-border collaboration among AI researchers, LEAs, forensic scientists, legal experts, and ethicists. DETECTOR’s goals include: developing specialized tools for detecting media manipulation, creating comprehensive datasets, researching digital evidence exchange across borders, engaging stakeholders, informing policymakers, and training forensic experts in digital media and AI. Through these efforts, DETECTOR seeks to safeguard digital evidence authenticity and enhance forensic capabilities to counter AI-driven media manipulation across Europe

The SHIELD PCP initiative aims to drive innovation by empowering buyers to actively influence the development of cost-effective solutions tailored to their unique requirements. The overarching aim is to equip security stakeholders with cutting-edge technology procured through innovative processes, offering solutions that enable seamless coordination and cooperation among all stakeholders, especially law enforcement agencies (LEAs). Building on the achievements of its predecessor, SHIEL4CROWD, the SHIELD PCP project adopts a top-down approach. This method consolidates widely agreed-upon scenarios to address critical security challenges, providing a detailed identification of innovation needs at both the process and technology levels. This top-down approach enabled the alignment of stakeholders, from security forces to public authorities, ensuring innovative solutions meet shared needs for public space protection. SHIELD4CROWD also developed a roadmap of innovations addressing operational and technical challenges while considering regulatory and economic factors. SHIELD PCP continues this work to enhance collaboration and improve public space security. The project follows a phased Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process, which includes: Preparatory Phase: Finalizing the tendering documentation developed during SHIEL4CROWD; Phase 1: Solution Design ;Phase 2: Prototype Development; and Phase 3: Operational Validation, conducted across three pilot sites in France, Spain, and Slovakia. A consortium of 10 partners from 6 EU countries, including 3 Ministries of Interior and 1 public transport operators as Public Buyers and 1 end-user, is collaborating on this project. Many other end-users will also be involved through the User Observatory Group (UOG).

INTERCEPT aims to strengthen the capabilities of law enforcement authorities in the EU and equip them with effective methods to remotely and safely stop vehicles posing imminent and high-security threats to citizens and society. This involves identifying technology gaps to address in order to minimize existing vulnerabilities and enhance security efficiency. This objective is endorsed from the outset by various stakeholders, particularly security practitioners. INTERCEPT involves eight end-users from eight EU countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Poland, Netherlands, Slovak Republic, Spain, and the United Kingdom), all of whom are also public buyers. Additionally, numerous other end-users will participate through the User Observatory Group (UOG). The project follows a progressive and iterative approach to collectively identify a common challenge that can be addressed with identified candidate technologies, laying the groundwork for future PCP, for which the buyer's group will be created during the project, through the continuous involvement of the UOG. Initially, at least six jointly defined common security use cases will comprehensively outline the gaps between available solutions, existing procedures, and identified requirements. Subsequently, technological experts will analyse these needs, considering legal, societal, ethical, and environmental factors, as well as state-of-the-art (SOTA) analysis and consultations with the open market. The outcomes will ultimately inform the definition of the common challenge and the development of the initial set of tender documents.