The Network Builds an Agentic AI Research Agent on AWS to Fight Human Trafficking

Overview

Nonprofit The Network, which tracks thousands of illicit massage businesses in the United States that are linked to human trafficking, is building an agentic AI research agent on Amazon Bedrock with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5. The agent autonomously performs the research protocols human investigators follow to verify whether businesses in its database are still operating. The solution is currently in the testing phase, with full rollout planned for later in 2026.

The challenge

With a team of approximately a dozen people, The Network's researchers could fully investigate only about a quarter of the businesses in its database each year, and the organization needed a way to expand its investigative reach without adding headcount.

The solution

With funding and support from the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, a combined team of six engineers built an agentic AI research agent, focusing first on determining whether businesses in the database are still operating. The agent autonomously performs the same research protocols that human investigators follow, querying multiple sources to verify each business's status. It is powered by Amazon Bedrock with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5, AWS Lambda provides the serverless compute for the research workflow, and Amazon API Gateway manages requests between The Network's database and the AI system. The team validates outputs against a "golden set" of pre-researched businesses, and every automated investigation goes through multiple accuracy checks before the findings are logged.

Reported business value

The agentic AI solution is currently in the testing phase, with full rollout planned for later in 2026. When the agent is incorporated with other tools under development, The Network estimates it could save thousands of researcher hours annually on routine status verification alone, freeing staff to focus on activities requiring judgment and relationship building and reducing the psychological toll of reviewing disturbing content.