FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau has overhauled its technology systems to counter artificial intelligence threats from adversarial nations including China and Russia, replacing what he described as decades of temporary fixes with full-scale modernization.
“Everybody that looks at the bureau thinks they must have the best tech and technology in the world,” Patel told Fox News Digital. “We didn’t because prior leadership, all they did for decades was put a band-aid over a band-aid over a band-aid and never took the time to fix it.”
Beyond defending against AI-enabled threats, the FBI is now using the technology itself. Patel said the bureau relies on AI to scan databases and process tips from the public more quickly, treating the tools as a supplement to human analysts rather than a replacement. He said the change has sped up the agency’s response to potential terrorist plots and school shootings.
“We get tips from our private sector partners and American citizens, and those tips come into our database now finally,” Patel said. “Instead of an old game of telephone where 50 people have to call 50 people, and it takes three days to get us the information, it’s ingested immediately. It’s analyzed.”
According to Patel, leads generated this way are routed to field offices, FBI headquarters in Washington is notified, and personnel are then dispatched to respond.
Patel said that when he became director, the FBI had used AI in only two or three test cases in its entire history. The agency has since surpassed its 140th use case for the technology, he said.
Patel described AI as “here to stay” at the FBI and said the bureau will continue to operate within legal guardrails while partnering with the private sector.
Broader push to regulate AI
The comments come as lawmakers weigh how to regulate the fast-growing AI industry. Earlier this week, dozens of technology leaders met with President Donald Trump at a White House summit, where they signed a voluntary, “morally binding” accord centered on industry self-policing.
“I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump told reporters during an impromptu press conference outside the West Wing.
The industry has faced recent scrutiny of its own. OpenAI fired three researchers after they allegedly shared confidential company information with a third-party AI safety organization, according to reports. The firings followed disclosures from OpenAI and other major AI companies about incidents involving AI models behaving unexpectedly or breaching the systems of other companies.
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