OSINT Tool – CarNet.ai

(Click here to watch and listen to the video version of this blog entry)

The best tool to (correctly!) identify a vehicle’s brand and model using AI.

Whilst trying to identify locations and/or locate people one must have a wealth of information available. Some people are great at identifying cars’ brands and models just by looking at the vehicle. I’m afraid I am not one of them. In fact, if I ever had to describe a car involved in some crime I would probably go with something like “it was grey”. Extremely unhelpful, I know.

Today I was analysing (another) geolocation challenge image where there is a very prominent car right in the centre of it. In order to narrow down the geographical location I am searching for, I decided to check out the sales statistics of this specific vehicle. Some countries have clear brand preferences when purchasing cars and this can be very helpful.
The problem is that, although I can kinda see the name of the make and model, I rather not trust my judgement on this.

I can imagine anyone looking at the image above and thinking: “This is obviously a seat ibiza”. For me it is, at foremost, just a grey car. After a quick google image search to confirm, I’m pretty convinced this is a seat ibiza. But now I am curious… Is there a tool out there that could just tell me with a certain percentage accuracy what is the make and model of the car is by just looking at a photo? Yep, there is!

I came across CarNet.ai and found it extremely useful for OSINT investigations. According to the description on their website: “CarNET API provides you with the ability to detect a car’s make, model, generation, colour and angle from an image of the car. Our API is powered by computer vision and deep learning technologies, and is capable of correctly recognizing cars in different lighting and weather conditions.”

I fed it my seat ibiza image and got a result with a 99.99% probability. Pretty amazing!

And it will not just identify it with the car body, you can also feed it images of the dashboard, interior, wheels, etc.

Feel free to check it out and take it for a drive.
Just to clarify, I am in no way affiliated with CarNet.ai, I just came across this website and was so excited that I wanted to share this very useful tool.

Thank you for reading!

~ Sofia.