AI Gun Detection System Fails in Nashville School Shooting, Raising Questions About Effectiveness

School's $1 Million AI Gun Detection System Fails to Detect Weapon Before Fatal School Shooting

"There's no system that's going to 100 percent capture everything a person has on them." An expensive AI gun detection system appears to have been a massive waste of money after it failed to detect the weapon used in a school shooting. As NBC News reports, the $1 million contract that Nashville's Antioch High School paid to a gun detection software company called Omnilert has come into question after a student managed to sneak in a gun and open fire in his high school's cafeteria. The 17-year-old gunman shot and killed one 16-year-old classmate and wounded another before turning the gun on himself, which he did not survive. Omnilert's technology used the school's security cameras and added AI that was supposed to detect hidden weapons. It didn't recognize the shooter's gun, NBC notes, in a news conference after the massacre, Metro Nashville Public Schools chief technology and communications officer Sean Braisted pointed out that the Omnilert system did activate when police entered with their own weapons. "It is designed to activate immediately once it detects [a weapon]," the school system's CTO said, per Nashville's WBIR broadcaster. "It did not detect that weapon in this instance... because of the location and where the cameras were positioned." In a statement to NBC, Omnilert echoed Braisted's comments about the system's cameras failing to find the gun in question. "The location of the shooter and the firearm meant that the weapon was not visible," said Omnilert CEO Dave Fraser in an email. "This is not a case of the firearm not being recognized by the system." Braisted -- who was also quoted in Omnilert's press release announcing the $1 million deal back in 2023 -- said during the news conference that the system had worked well in the past, and had detected police weapons before. MNPS superintendent Adrienne Battle also seemed to defend the expensive and apparently not watertight weapon detection software. "There's no system that's going to 100 percent capture everything a person has on them," Battle said during the same press conference. While these school and company officials work overtime to defend their wasteful investment in the sort of AI-powered technology that has for years now been known to fail, two teenagers are dead in the latest tragic school shooting. Slapping AI on top of shoddy weapon scanners doesn't make them work -- and in this case, the false sense of security they provide ended in tragedy.

School's AI Gun Detector Failed to Detect Gun in Nashville School Shooting

District officials said the oversight was caused by the location of the school's cameras. An AI gun detection system installed in a Nashville, Tennessee high school couldn't spot the gun a 17-year-old used to fatally shoot another student and himself earlier this week, according to district officials. The Omnilert system "is designed to activate immediately once it detects [a gun], as we described, it did not detect that weapon in this instance and that, because of the location and where the cameras were positioned,†said Sean Braisted, a spokesperson for Metro Nashville Public Schools, according to local news coverage of a press conference on Thursday. Braisted said the system did detect police officers' guns when they arrived on the scene and has detected guns in the past, Nashville's local NBC station reported. The school district agreed to a two-year, $1 million contract with Omnilert in 2023. In an email to Gizmodo, Dave Fraser, CEO of Omnilert, said his heart goes out to the students, families, and greater Nashville community in the wake of the shooting. "We can confirm that the Omnilert gun detection system is deployed at MNPS but in this case the location of the shooter and the firearm meant that the weapon was not visible," he said. "This is not a case of the firearm not being recognized by the system." The shooting on Wednesday took place in the cafeteria of Antioch High School. Data from GovSpend, which collects information about government contracts, shows that more than 100 cities, school districts, community colleges, and universities have purchased Omnilert's systems. The company is part of an AI-based weapons detection industryâ€"which also includes companies like Evolv Technologies and ZeroEyesâ€"that is winning multi-million contracts from schools and other government agencies despite mounting evidence that the systems are not as effective as they're advertised to be. In November, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Evolv, accusing it of deceptively marketing the accuracy of its Express weapon-scanning system. The agency pointed to the Utica, New York school district's Express system, which failed to detect a knife that was used in the October 2022 stabbing of a student. After the incident, the school district increased the system's sensitivity, but that change doubled the rate of false alarms, where the system incorrectly alerted security staff about weapons that didn't exist, according to the FTC. During a pilot at New York City's Jacobi Medical Center, more than 85% of the alerts Evolv scanners generated over a seven-month period were false alarms, and another 14% involved law enforcement officers, according to documents obtained by Hell Gate. When the city then tested Evolv in subway stations, it detected no guns, 12 knives, and generated 118 false alarms over 30 days, according to City & State New York. In March, Philadelphia's public transit agency, SEPTA, ended its contract with ZeroEyes because the company's weapons detection system failed to integrate with SEPTA's security cameras. A 2023 report by the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory raised similar concerns about ZeroEyes's ability to work with anything but high-quality camera images. The evaluators also complained that the company didn't provide data about the system's accuracy.

AI weapon detection system at Antioch High School failed to detect gun in Nashville shooting

Families wait at a unification site following a shooting Wednesday at the Antioch High School in Nashville, Tenn.George Walker IV / AP An artificial intelligence-powered weapon detection system failed to pick up the handgun a 17-year-old Nashville student used in a school shooting Wednesday that left a 16-year-old girl dead. The software, called Omnilert, failed to detect the gun because of where cameras were located inside Antioch High School, Metro Nashville Public Schools spokesperson Sean Braisted said at a Thursday afternoon news conference. But the system was activated by police brandishing their weapons during the response to the shooting, Braisted said. Omnilert connects to the school's existing network of cameras and uses AI technology to detect weapons, he said, but "in this instance, based on the shooter's location in proximity to the cameras, it wasn't close enough to get an accurate read and to activate that alarm." Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle said "there is not one system that is 100% going to capture everything that a person may have on them." Omnilert works by turning security cameras "into life-saving tools, protecting lives while reducing the operational, legal, and social costs of gun violence," its website states. It helps detect firearms and then triggers immediate alerts. "These are designed to capture things that are on camera, and so we wanted to have a system that worked on multiple cameras throughout the network, it does work but it's not going to work in every instance, in every spot based on where that weapon might be visible," Braisted said. "So that's why we have additional safety and security protocols." In addition to Omnilert, the school uses AI systems at the front door, has security vestibules and uses school resource officers. "It all works together as a system, but one system alone is not going to keep people safe," Braisted said. "And there's also just the general public concerns around how a 17-year-old has a weapon." "I mean these are questions that are beyond the scope of Metro Schools, but need to be addressed by the broader community," he said. "But we are doing what we can as a district to install and equip our schools with the safety protocols and resources that we can use to be safe." In the wake of the shooting, some have questioned why the school did not use metal detectors. Battle told reporters Thursday that research has shown there are pros and cons of using the detectors. "There are lots of unintended consequences, mainly when you think about the types of learning environments we want for our students. I mean, the first person we want our students to interact with are their principals and their teachers and their fellow students," she said. A motive in the shooting is unclear, although Nashville Police Chief John Drake said authorities are looking into "some materials on the internet" believed to be from the shooter, who was identified as Solomon Henderson. He fatally shot himself after the attack. Authorities said Henderson was an active student at the school and took the school bus before later opening fire in the cafeteria, killing Josselin Corea Escalante. One other student was wounded when he was grazed in the arm.

AI weapon detection system at Nashville high school failed to detect gun, official says

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- An artificial intelligence-powered weapon detection software installed on cameras at Antioch High School failed to pick up the firearm the suspected shooter used in a shooting Wednesday that killed a 16-year-old female student, a Nashville school district official said. The software, known as Omnilert, is an add-on to the camera network at all Metro Nashville Public Schools campuses. The district invested over $1 million in the software after the school board approved a contract in February 2023. "In this instance, based on the location of the shooter and the position of the weapon, it did not activate the system," Metro Nashville Public Schools spokesperson Sean Braisted told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. But the system did activate as armed police officers entered the school, he said. The shooting killed Josselin Corea Escalante, 16, and left a 17-year-old wounded after a bullet grazed him. The suspected shooter, Solomon Henderson, 17, then fatally shot himself, according to police. Authorities are still investigating the shooting. Metro Nashville Police Department John Drake said the suspected shooter was a student at Antioch High and that he rode the bus to school Wednesday morning before making his way to the cafeteria, where he confronted and shot Escalante. He then fired several rounds before turning the gun on himself, Drake said. 'Committed to understanding how and why this happened' Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle said Wednesday that multiple safety measures are in place at Antioch High, including school resource officers, a secured vestibule at the entrance, and cameras with weapon-detection software. She praised school staff, including school resource officers who rushed to the cafeteria from another part of the building, for responding quickly as the shooting unfolded. "While we have been focused on addressing the immediate situation, we are committed to understanding how and why this happened and what more we can do to prevent such tragedies in the future," Battle said in an emailed statement Wednesday. "It's important to remember that our schools have historically been safe places for learning, friendship, and growth. We cannot allow this tragedy to overshadow the positive experiences of our 80,000 students." Antioch High School will be closed for the rest of the week. All other district schools will remain open this week, and school counselors will be on hand to provide support.