The FBI used an AI-powered forensic platform built by digital investigations firm Exterro as part of its urgent probe into the attempted assassination at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner, the company told Axios.
Exterro said the FBI used its platform, called FTK Suite, during the 48-hour window between the April 25 shooting at the Washington Hilton and the filing of charges against suspect Cole Thomas Allen.
The company could not disclose exactly how the bureau used the tool, but executives said customers typically use it to sift through messages on seized devices, social media accounts and other digital trails tied to a case. The FBI declined to comment to Axios.
The Justice Department has said investigators reviewed seized devices, cloud and email accounts, travel and financial records, surveillance footage and metadata from the hotel where the dinner took place.
Exterro's platform lets investigators organise evidence from a case into a single repository accessible to multiple authorised users simultaneously. Users can query an embedded AI assistant with prompts such as "find all pictures of dogs" or ask whether a particular person was at a specific location at a given time, according to a demo the outlet viewed.
"We allow it to be deployed in some of the most secure locations globally," Harsh Behl, Exterro's vice president of product management, told the outlet. "Investigators may not have access to the internet or cloud, so we allow it to be deployed in the customer premises and the data never leaves their premises."
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The company said it does not train its AI models on customer data and that investigators remain responsible for reviewing evidence and making charging decisions. Exterro's clients include law enforcement agencies and roughly 40 Fortune 100 companies, the company said.
As AI tools become more central to digital evidence review, courts are increasingly grappling with how to verify that evidence has not been AI-generated or manipulated. The platform includes a separate tool designed to help flag potential deepfakes.
"Our product touches the lives of people every day and has a direct impact on people's lives," Behl said. "Based on the findings from our tool, somebody could be proved to be guilty or not, and that is the gravitas."
Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was charged with attempting to assassinate US President Donald Trump, along with related firearms counts, days after the shooting. He was later indicted on an additional charge of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon.
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