Feds Say Evolv Is Over-Hyping AI Tech in Gun Detectors

Evolv, the company behind a controversial “artificial intelligence” system used to detect guns on New York subways and in schools across the country, has been accused by the Federal Trade Commission of misleading customers, according to a new press release from the FTC. The agency alleges the Evolv Express scanners, which are used in about 800 schools in 40 states, aren’t as accurate at detecting weapons as the company claims. And the FTC wants Evolv to stop overstating what its AI can do.

“In the proposed FTC settlement order, Evolv would be banned from making unsupported claims about its products’ ability to detect weapons by using artificial intelligence and would also have to give certain K-12 school customers the option to cancel their contracts, which generally lock customers into multi-year deals,” the FTC said in a press release Tuesday.

The Evolv weapons detector gained widespread notice in the national press earlier this year when the system was installed in the New York subway system. But even the CEO at the time noted the subway system wasn’t a good use case.

The FTC says Evolv has falsely implied that users can avoid having to make the trade-offs necessary for having a highly secure weapon-detection system and a “seamless experience” for people entering a building. At the heart of the problem, setting the scanners to a lower sensitivity level allows too many weapons to get through undetected, and setting it to a higher sensitivity sets off too many false alarms.

Evolv says that its system is superior to regular metal detectors because it utilizes AI, but the FTC argues that’s little more than marketing hype.

“The FTC has been clear that claims about technology—including artificial intelligence—need to be backed up, and that is especially important when these claims involve the safety of children,” said Samuel Levine, the director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, according to a press release. “If you make those claims without adequate support, you can expect to hear from the FTC.”

The FTC notes in a court filing that in Oct. 2022 a student at a New York school brought a 7-inch knife that passed through an Evolv Express scanner. And other times, Evolv scanners have failed to detect an off-duty cop’s weapon while setting off an alarm for a student’s lunchbox. The school raised the sensitivity levels after the stabbing incident, but that just doubled the false alarm rate to 50%, according to the FTC.

A spokesperson for Evolv directed Gizmodo to the company’s press release on the matter.

“We worked collaboratively with the FTC to resolve this matter and are pleased that the FTC did not challenge the fundamental effectiveness of our technology and that the resolution does not include any monetary relief. We appreciated the opportunity to demonstrate for the FTC our Evolv Express system and our customers’ diligence in researching, testing and ultimately deploying our solution in myriad environments,” said Mike Ellenbogen, interim president and CEO of Evolv, in the release.

“Our top priority is the safety of people and the communities we serve,” Ellenbogen continued. “To be clear, this inquiry was about past marketing language and not our system’s ability to add value to security operations.”