About CustomAI
Customs authorities play a vital role in the global trade ecosystem – preventing the entry of illegal goods, safeguarding public safety and revenue, and ensuring the smooth flow of international commerce. However, as trade volumes continue to grow, balancing these responsibilities has become increasingly complex. Detecting illicit goods amidst millions of legitimate shipments is a mounting challenge, especially with limited human resources.
Our Mission
CustomAI brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of experts to develop an AI-driven toolkit designed to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of customs operations. The ultimate goal is drastically reduce false positives – cases where shipments are flagged for inspection despite being legitimate – while ensuring that high-risk cargoes are accurately identified.
By integrating non-intrusive, robust, and intelligent technologies, CustomAI will enable customs authorities to predict, detect, and select high-risk containers, parcels, and cultural goods for inspection with unprecedented precision.
Key innovations
At the heart of CustomAI lies the Virtual Customs Control Office (VCCO) concept – a digital environment encapsulating all the knowledge and processes needed to manage customs control for an artefact (e.g., container or parcel). The VCCO integrates a suite of cutting-edge technologies.
AI-based risk anticipation
combining internal knowledge with external multilingual data such as manifests and declarations to identify only the most relevant cargoes for inspection.
AI-enhanced vapour-based detectors
applied selectively to containers flagged in the previous risk assessment stage.
AI-based x-ray analysis
for threat detection, streamlining the inspection process and involving human inspectors only when necessary.
Multimodal LLM Continual Learning
leveraging x-ray and camera imagery to continuously improve threat recognition models based on real customs data.
Blockchain-enabled data sharing
to ensure secure, transparent, and traceable supply chain communications.
Semantic NeRF-based
for creating and comparing 3D digital models of cultural artefacts, aiding in the detection of illegally exported cultural goods.
At the heart of CustomAI lies the Virtual Customs Control Office (VCCO) concept – a digital environment encapsulating all the knowledge and processes needed to manage customs control for an artefact (e.g., container or parcel). The VCCO integrates a suite of cutting-edge technologies.
By pioneering the next generation of AI-powered customs technologies, CustomAI aims to make customs processes intelligent, secure, and efficient – enabling authorities to manage growing trade volumes without increasing the number of human resources needed for the process. The project’s outcomes will pave the way for effective, automated customs control checkpoints, setting a new standard for international trade facilitation and border security in Europe and beyond.