King's-led project explores responsible use of AI in military violence investigations

Launched in September 2025, Assembling Certainty is co-led by Dr David Young, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's, Dr Josh Bowsher, Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sussex, and casualty recording watchdog Airwars. The project received funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council Catalyst Award.

Launching at a moment of intensified media coverage of military violence and changing methods for organisations and activists to document civilian harm, the project explores how the computational tools used in open-source investigations have advanced and changed the ways in which an investigation can be conducted, and the types and scales of data it can work with.

'Journalists, activists, and NGOs have long used "open sources" - that is, multimedia content posted on social media and mapping platforms - to conduct enquiries into military violence,' the project team says. 'However, changes in the pace and forms of data that social media users post, the challenges of disinformation and deepfake content, and the vast scales of satellite imagery have presented both significant challenges and opportunities for conflict researchers.'

In recent years, a number of high-profile investigations, for example Forensic Architecture's Triple Chaser, have employed machine learning to "automate" parts of the analysis process. Organisations such as Amnesty International have suggested that incorporating these techniques into their methods enables researchers to conduct human rights investigations that would otherwise be immensely challenging to resource.

The Assembling Certainty team are currently training a tool to analyse imagery in Airwars' Syria archive - a database of thousands of alleged civilian casualty incidents variously attributed to US-led coalition, Russian, and Turkish forces. By critically evaluating how the tool might supplement the analysis carried out by Airwars researchers, the project will report on the relations between software, data, and human judgement in assessing and documenting civilian harm.

Assembling Certainty breaks new ground in bringing together academic experts in the fields of software studies, data politics and the sociology of human rights with highly experienced researchers and investigators at Airwars.

Drawing on these varied backgrounds, the project will set out guidance around how and where machine learning might be responsibly used in an investigation. It will also highlight critical ethical risks around algorithmic bias, verification and transparency that require scrutiny.

As part of the project, Dr David Young has worked with colleagues from the Department of Digital Humanities and the Digital Futures Institute at King's to set up a Digital Investigations Lab, creating a space to explore overlaps between investigative methods across different academic and journalistic fields. A programme of training workshops, project reports, and other events begins in March 2026.

The Lab invites practitioners who share an interest in learning about and conducting investigations into topics including, among others, environmental crisis, shadow finance, armed conflict and political lobbying.