The injured teenage survivor of the January 2025 Nashville, Tennessee high school shooting recently sued the maker of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the handgun that killed two people, including the shooter.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Davidson County court last month, security company Omnilert either knew or should have known that “its gun identification system had significant operational limitations that could result in identification failure during a true emergency, including limitations based on camera placement, proximity of the weapon to the camera sensor, camera angle, lighting, and weapon visibility.”
Omnialert co-founder Ara Bagdasarian declined Ars’s invitation to answer questions about the lawsuit. Systems Integration, the other defendant in the case, which re-sold the Omnialert system, also did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.
In 2023, the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) board approved a contract worth more than $1 million to install an AI detection layer on top of its district-wide network of cameras and related security infrastructure.
MNPS spokesman Sean Brasted said in a press conference after the January 2025 shooting that because of where the shooter was in relation to the camera, the imagery was “not close enough to get an accurate read and activate that alarm.”
The lawsuit frequently cites marketing copy on Omnilert’s own website (as preserved on the Internet Archive from a few days before the shooting), alleging that the company oversold its capabilities:
Omnialert further demonstrated that AI-powered visual gun detection “could have mitigated or prevented the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by identifying threats earlier” — one of the nation’s most devastating school shootings — going on to say that its product would prevent similar tragedies…
Omnialert made no mention of false alarms, false positives, or detection limitations of any kind on its pre-shooting commercial website.
Chris Smith, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, told Ars that using a specific set of situational conditions under which the detection system is effective is questionable.
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