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 misled customers, according to a new press release from the FTC. The agency says Evolv Express scanners, which are used in about 800 schools in 40 states, are not as accurate at detecting weapons as the company claims. And the FTC wants Evolv to stop exaggerating what its AI can do.
“In the FTC project settlement orderEvolv would be barred from making unsubstantiated claims about its products’ ability to detect weapons using artificial intelligence and would also have to give some elementary and secondary school customers the option to cancel their contracts, which typically locks out customers in multi-year contracts,” the FTC said in a statement Tuesday.
The Evolv weapon detector has been widely noticed in the national press earlier this year when the system was installed in the New York subway. But even the CEO at the time emphasized that the metro system was not a good use case.
The FTC says Evolv falsely implied that users can avoid having to make the compromises necessary to have a highly secure gun detection system and a “seamless experience” for people entering a building. At the heart of the problem, setting scanners to a lower sensitivity level allows too many weapons to pass through undetected, and setting to a higher sensitivity triggers too many false alarms.
Evolv claims its system is superior to traditional metal detectors because it uses AI, but the FTC says that’s little more than marketing hype.
“The FTC has made clear that claims about technology, including artificial intelligence, must be substantiated, and this is especially important when those claims involve the safety of children,” said Samuel Levine, director of the Bureau of Protection of consumers, according to press release. “If you make these claims without adequate support, you can expect to hear from the FTC.”
The FTC notes in a court filing that in October 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 failed to detect an off-duty police officer’s gun while setting off an alarm for a student’s lunchbox. The school increased sensitivity levels after the stabbing incident, but that only doubled the false alarm rate to 50 percent, according to the FTC.
An Evolv spokesperson directed Gizmodo to the company’s site. press release on the question.
“We worked collaboratively with the FTC to resolve this issue and are pleased that the FTC did not question the fundamental effectiveness of our technology and that the resolution does not include any monetary relief.” We appreciated the opportunity to demonstrate to the FTC our Evolv Express system and our customers’ diligence in researching, testing and ultimately deploying our solution in a myriad of environments,” said Mike Ellenbogen, President and CEO of Evolv, in the press release.
“Our top priority is the safety of the people and communities we serve,” Ellenbogen continued. “To be clear, this investigation focused on past marketing language and not on our system’s ability to add value to security operations.”
