The Kansas Attorney General’s Office recently announced there are three bidders for the $10 million contract to provide artificial intelligence-enabled gun detection software to Kansas Schools. The funding was part of the 2025 budget bill passed earlier this year. In 2024, Governor Laura Kelly used her line-item veto on a provision that would have provided safety grants to schools for security cameras with ZeroEyes firearm detection software.
According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, “legislative staff said in a bill explainer that the proviso restricted the funding to a pilot program with ZeroEyes. In her veto message, Kelly criticized it as ‘a no-bid contract.'”
According to the Journal, once a vendor is selected and a contract is executed, the contractor must hit certain deadlines to implement the program, including installing and integrating the technology at participating schools by Dec. 31, with the system fully operational by Feb. 28, 2026, and must integrate into existing security cameras.
“School districts may apply to Attorney General Kris Kobach’s office for authorization to use the software, but the vendor will then work directly with the selected schools,” the Journal reported. “The state funding terminates at the end of fiscal year 2026 — so if a school district wants to continue using the software after funding runs out, it must use its own money.”
ZeroEyes Inc., of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, was one of the bidders this year, along with Gades Sales Company Inc., of Wichita, and CIS Data Services, of Springfield, Missouri.
The problem with software such as ZeroEyes is that — by the company’s own admission — it cannot detect a concealed firearm.
Which begs the question, if the software cannot detect a concealed weapon, or even one in a holster, would the funds be better spent on additional school resource officers?
The request for proposal released earlier this year required a minimum 90% true positive rate for visible, unholstered guns and no more than 5% false positives, with detections validated within 60 seconds and alerts delivered within 60 seconds.
But, according to KCUR, ZeroEyes won’t say how common false positives are.
“It isn’t clear how common false alerts are,” KCUR said. “ZeroEyes said it isn’t a number ‘that we put out there.’”
If it’s a number the company does not “put out there,” then it’s unclear how the software could meet the requirements in the RFP.
False positives from ZeroEyes have caused police to respond to schools without need
Moreover, there have been false positives from AI Detection software.
For instance, in 2023, in Clute, Texas, the ZeroEyes software alerted on an indistinct blob on screen, and the entire district went into lockdown. A parent, who asked to remain anonymous, told the local NBC Affiliate his daughter texted him that she was hiding.
“She was scared. Friends were scared. Family was scared. Everybody was scared,” the parent said.
In June of 2024, in Rochester, New York, AI software triggered a false alert and caused St. John Fischer University to go into lockdown.
Apparently, the software mistook prop guns being used in a theater rehearsal as real firearms.
More recently, in Baltimore County, Maryland, according to Fox News, in October of this year, “Student Taki Allen was waiting for his ride at Kenwood High School in Essex, Maryland, last Monday when he placed an empty bag of chips in his pocket, according to WMAR-2 News. Moments later, police officers suddenly surrounded him, ordering him to the ground and handcuffing him, the local station reported.“
“Police showed up, like eight cop cars, and then they all came out with guns pointed at me, talking about getting on the ground,” Allen told WMAR-2. “I was putting my hands up like, ‘What’s going on?’”
