Evolv AI Weapons Detection System Allegedly Misrepresents Accuracy, Leading to School Security Gaps
March 22, 2022
Evolv's AI-powered weapons scanners were advertised as superior to metal detectors but reportedly failed to detect actual weapons while generating excessive false positives. The FTC alleged that misleading claims about the system's accuracy and speed contributed to schools relying on unreliable detection, with at least one incident in October 2022 involving a missed knife that resulted in a student being stabbed.
- Alleged deployer
- charlotte-mecklenburg-school-district
- Alleged developer
- evolv-technology
- Alleged harmed parties
- teachers-at-charlotte-mecklenburg-schools, students-at-charlotte-mecklenburg-schools, security-officers-at-charlotte-mecklenburg-schools, parents-of-students-at-charlotte-mecklenburg-schools, school-administrators-at-charlotte-mecklenburg-schools
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/349
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.