DFRWS has published the report on an interactive working session of practitioner perspectives regarding use of AI in digital forensics casework. This practitioner-led session was held during the Digital Forensics Conference 2026 Americas, organized by DFRWS.org at George Mason University. 

Eoghan Casey, Jim Jones, Jessica Hyde, Cameron Kelley, and Chad Steel each shared their experiences and led group discussions, guided by live audience polls projected on a large screen to help focus on participants’ perspectives.

Topics addressed include performance evaluation of AI, appropriate and inappropriate use of AI in digital forensics, grounding AI in digital forensics expertise to improve reliability and accuracy, AI engineering and guardrails, and investigator/attorneys self-service AI analysis of digital evidence.

Threaded throughout the discussions was the conviction that digital forensics practitioners are responsible for verifying the veracity of outputs from AI-assisted and AI-generated tools. Anyone cannot push a button and blindly accept the output or pass it off to a non-specialist to determine whether or not it is reliable. 

An overarching theme reiterated throughout the session was the need to treat AI tools in a similar manner to conventional digital forensics tooling, including the ability to audit what was done and to trace a result back to its source data. 

An important realization was that guidance addressed only to digital forensics practitioners will not reach investigators and attorneys, leaving them vulnerable to undetected errors and incorrect conclusions. Therefore, it is imperative that digital forensics practitioners actively engage with investigators and attorneys on the responsible use of AI, and be a critical part of the analysis for the interpretation and validation of digital evidence.

Full report: Practitioner Perspectives on Making AI Defensible in Digital Forensics Casework.