Schools use AI to detect weapons on campuses

By Pamela Comme

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    VOLUSIA COUNTY, Florida (WESH) — Volusia County schools have implemented artificial intelligence technology to detect weapons in real time after an increase in weapons found on campuses last school year.

Capt. Todd Smith, Volusia County Schools’ director of safety and security, explained the new “Zero Eyes” technology, saying, “Basically, it uses artificial intelligence inside the camera itself. So it uses our existing cameras, and then it’s artificial intelligence embedded in it to identify weapons in real time and make notifications that there’s a weapon on one of our campuses.”

Smith further detailed the system’s capabilities.

“As soon as it arises, instead of waiting for there to be a gun shot fired or something along those lines or somebody else to witness it, you know, it really just makes it where it cuts out more of the all the middleman and gets it directly to the notification, to the people that need to know it,” Smith said.

Before its implementation in schools, the system was piloted by Daytona Beach police, whose success encouraged officials to proceed with embedding the technology in cameras across all middle and high schools.

“We tried to strategically pick the cameras that we thought would be, you know, the best for security and implemented it on,” Smith said, emphasizing that this technology is an additional tool for enhancing school safety.

This school year, Volusia County schools have recovered a total of 56 weapons, none of which were firearms.

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