AI-enabled ammunition merchandising machines may facilitate mass shootings and let folks circumvent federal bans prohibiting folks with sure felony convictions from shopping for ammunition, two senators warn.

Massachusetts Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren despatched a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) asking it to “intently look at” facial recognition-enabled ammunition merchandising machines which have just lately been put in in supermarkets in sure states.

The machines, distributed by the Texas-based firm American Rounds, started showing in grocery shops in Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma in July. American Rounds says the machines have “built-in AI expertise, card scanning functionality and facial recognition software program” that confirms the purchaser’s age and verifies that their face matches their ID. The machines don’t restrict how a lot ammunition an individual should purchase at a time.

“Easy accessibility to ammunition helps to gasoline our nation’s gun violence epidemic, which now claims greater than 44,000 lives yearly,” the letter reads. “Research present that rising the supply of firearms and ammunition results in extra accidents and deaths, particularly suicides, and that regulation of ammunition purchases will help cut back gun violence.”

Markey and Warren’s letter says these machines carry “inherent dangers,” together with presumably permitting people who find themselves barred from buying weapons and ammo underneath federal regulation — together with folks with convictions for felonies or home violence misdemeanors and other people with lively home violence-related restraining orders — to avoid these restrictions. The letter additionally says that eliminating face-to-face gross sales means there’s no alternative to establish straw purchases. “[E]xperienced gun store workers could possibly detect when somebody makes an attempt to straw buy ammunition for one more and cease the transaction,” the letter reads. Clerks may additionally discover when a buyer is experiencing indicators of misery or different warnings that they plan on utilizing ammunition to harm themselves or others — and will refuse to promote to them.

The letter additionally takes challenge with the machines’ use of “unreliable and inaccurate facial recognition expertise,” noting that research present that facial recognition algorithms misidentify ladies and other people of colour at increased charges than they misidentify white males. “Given the numerous error charges with facial recognition expertise, ammunition merchandising machines increase critical considerations about false approval and potential authorized implications for each customers and distributors.”

“A federal license just isn’t required to promote ammunition. Nevertheless, industrial gross sales of ammunition should adjust to state legal guidelines in addition to any relevant federal legal guidelines,” an ATF spokesperson stated in a press release to CNN in July.

Markey and Warren have requested that the ATF present written responses to a listing of questions by August thirtieth. The ATF didn’t instantly reply to The Verge’s request for remark.