Deep Science AI's tech is what Defendry wanted to publish

Deep Science AI has recently demoed a computer vision system that can spot a gun or a mask in CCTV footage and immediately alert the concerned people or the police to an imminent crime. Deep Science AI and its tech is now a part of Defendry, which aims to deploy the new surveillance tech more widely.

Deep Science AI’s middle layer significantly highlights shady situations like guns drawn to instantly grab the attention of the personnel keeping an eye on hundreds of feeds. The system is “not just an indicator of crimes in progress but crimes about to begin,” said Deep Science AI co-founder Sean Huver in an interview.

For example, a person pulling out a gun in a parking lot of a store would trigger the exterior doors to lock itself. And when an innocent check-in, the police could be on their way to arrest the miscreant before he/she reaches the entrance, or, it could be considered a false positive leaving the doors unlocked before anyone even noticed anything.

“You really need to build the monitoring around the AI technology rather than the other way around,” said Huver. Meanwhile, Pat Sullivan at Defendry, who also was in search of a tech that notified companies of “serious problems like robberies and fires,” led him “to search for a weapons and dangerous situations dataset, which led me to Sean,” he said.

When asked about the bias in the computer vision algorithms, Huver and Sullivan said that the tech doesn’t rely on facial recognition or any other similar techniques. “We’re really stepping around that issue because we’re focusing on very distinct objects,” said Huver. While still working on “the accuracy rates” that “just aren’t there to perform at scale for what we need,” the two companies will partner with Avinet – a security hardware provider – to deploy the tech at client places.