Legislation in Florida is signaling a new frontier in the battle over gun rights, as it aims to ban using artificial intelligence-enhanced video surveillance to detect firearms.
A pair of identical bills from Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R) and Rep. Monique Miller (R) would prohibit it in all public areas except schools.
“Advances in technology should never lead to the erosion of our right to protect oneself and one’s property,” Ingoglia said in a statement announcing the legislation earlier this month.
The novel Florida measures are further evidence of AI’s encroachment into virtually every aspect of daily life, as well as the technology’s potential to disrupt well-worn public policy debates.
State legislators across the country are working this year to combat algorithmic discrimination, AI deepfakes and AI-generated child sexual abuse material. They are also seeking transparency requirements so that the public knows when AI is in use or when content is made by AI, among other protections.
AI is increasingly being deployed to detect the presence of guns or other weapons on live security camera feeds. Ingoglia and Miller say their aim in targeting gun detection technology is to protect people’s constitutional rights.
“We should not allow local governments to infringe upon either our right to carry a firearm or our 4th amendment right to not being illegally searched just because the advent of artificial intelligence makes it possible,” Miller said in a statement.
Pennsylvania-based ZeroEyes is a veteran-owned company that offers schools, hospitals, businesses, nonprofits, transit agencies and other entities an AI add-on to their existing security camera system that can detect a firearm.
Co-founder and chief revenue officer Sam Alaimo provided Pluribus News with a short demonstration of the company’s technology. In the video scenario, a man with a rifle is detected on camera, prompting an immediate alert to ZeroEyes’s operations center where a human verifies the presence of a gun and notifies authorities.
“That’s not taking anyone’s guns away, that’s not invalidating anyone’s rights,” said Alaimo, a former Navy SEAL. “It’s just us notifying the [school] … or the municipality that there’s a person with an assault weapon walking into a building.”
Alaimo highlighted two recent examples of ZeroEyes’s technology at work in the real world. In one instance, a man with a pistol on his chest was spotted napping in a subway station. In another, three individuals arrived outside an unnamed elementary school and pulled an AK-47 out of a duffle bag. In both cases, authorities were alerted.
The company also points to a 2023 arrest in Hobbs, N.M., when its technology detected an individual pointing a long gun in the parking lot of a city pool. Police were called and the individual was arrested for shooting sporting clays in a public area. The city had begun using ZeroEyes’s technology months earlier. There have also been false alarms.
Alaimo said ZeroEyes has been in touch with the Florida bill sponsors and anticipates the legislation will be amended. Ingoglia did not confirm the conversation but said in an emailed statement that he is “always open to listening in an effort to clarify and strengthen proposed legislation.”
Ingoglia also defended the legislation.
“The key to regulating AI is to think of potential nefarious uses and safeguard against it before implementation, not after,” Ingoglia said.
Elsewhere, state lawmakers are looking for ways to incentivize the use of gun detection technology in schools.
Bipartisan legislation in Tennessee this year would establish a three-year pilot program to provide grants to school districts to purchase AI-powered weapons detection systems for schools. Other states, including Florida, have passed similar legislation.
Ingoglia said he does not oppose the use of gun detection technology on K-12 school campuses.
ZeroEyes, which has contracts with hundreds of school districts nationwide, has drawn scrutiny for lobbying state lawmakers to allow public funding to pay for its technology.
Alaimo defended the company’s efforts, saying school districts are not mandated to purchase the technology. He also said the cost of AI gun detection, at $20 to $60 per month per live streaming camera, is less expensive than many other security upgrades.
“We’re the least expensive because we’re software,” Alaimo said.