The wounded teenager who survived a January 2025 shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, high school recently sued the maker of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the gun that left two people dead, including the shooter.
According to the demandthat was filed in Davidson County Court last month, security company Omnilert knew or should have known that there were “significant operational limitations to its gun detection system that could lead to detection failures during real-world emergencies, including limitations based on camera location, proximity of the gun to camera sensors, camera angle, lighting, and gun visibility.”
Omnilert co-founder Ara Bagdasarian declined Ars’ invitation to answer questions about the lawsuit. System Integrations, the other defendant in the case, which resold the Omnilert 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 camera network and related security infrastructure.
MNPS Spokesperson Sean Braisted he said at a press conference After the January 2025 shooting, due to the shooter’s location relative to the cameras, the footage “wasn’t close enough to get an accurate reading and set off that alarm.”
The lawsuit frequently cites marketing texts on Omnilert’s own website (such as preserved in the Internet Archive a few days before the shooting), alleging that the company oversold its capabilities:
Omnilert further claimed that AI-powered visual gun detection “could have mitigated or prevented the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School” by identifying threats earlier, invoking one of the country’s most devastating school shootings to convey that its product would prevent similar tragedies…
Omnilert made no mention of false alarms, false positives, or detection limitations of any kind on its pre-shoot commercial website.
The use of a specific set of situational conditions under which the detection system is effective is questionable, Chris Smith, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, told Ars.
