An AI gun detection system installed at a high school in Nashville, Tennessee did not detect the gun used by a 17-year-old who killed another student and himself earlier this week, according to officials. in the district.

The Omnilert system “is designed to activate immediately when it detects (a gun), as we described, it did not detect a weapon in this instance and that, because of the location and where the cameras are set up, ” said Sean Braisted, a spokesman for Metro Nashville Public Schools, according to local news coverage in a press conference last Thursday. Braisted said the system detected the police officers’ guns when they arrived on the scene and found the guns before, local station NBC in Nashville reported.

The school district agreed to a two-year, $1 million grant 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 the greater Nashville community in the wake of the shooting. “We can confirm that the Omnilert gun detection system was deployed by the MNPS but in this case the location of the shooter and the weapon meant that the weapon was not detected,” he said. “This is not a case of a weapon that is not recognized in the system.”

Wednesday’s shooting happened in the Antioch High School cafeteria.

Data from GovSpend, which collects information about government contracts, shows that more than 100 cities, school districts, community colleges, and universities have purchased Omnilert systems. The company is part of the AI-based weapons detection industry—which also includes companies such as Evolv Technologies and ZeroEyes—namely winning multi-million contracts from schools and other government agencies despite mounting evidence that the systems are not as effective as they are advertised to be..

In November, the Federal Trade Commission filed a COMPLAINT against Evolv, accusing it of fraudulently selling the accuracy of its Express weapon scanning system. The agency pointed to the Utica, New York district’s Express system, which failed to find a knife used in October 2022. stabbing a student. After the incident, the school district increased the sensitivity of the system, but that change doubled the rate of false alarms, in which the system falsely alerts security staff about weapons that aren’t present, according to the FTC .

During a pilot at Jacobi Medical Center in New York City, more than 85% of the alerts Evolv scanners generated over a seven-month period were false alarms, and another 14% involved law enforcement officers. of the law, according to documents obtained by Gate of Hell. When the city tested Evolv in subway stations, it found no guns, 12 knives, and generated 118 false alarms in 30 days, according to City and State of New York.

In March, Philadelphia’s public transit agency, SEPTA, its contract ended with ZeroEyes because the company’s weapons detection system failed to integrate with SEPTA’s security cameras. A 2023 report of the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory raised similar concerns about ZeroEyes’ ability to work with anything but high-quality camera images. Evaluators also complained that the company did not provide data about the system’s accuracy.