Paul Hildreth peered at a display of dozens of images from security cameras surveying his Atlanta school district and settled on one showing a woman in a bright yellow shirt walking a hallway.

A mouse click instructed the artificial intelligence-equipped system to find other images of the woman, and it immediately stitched them into a video narrative of where she was currently, where she had been and where she was going.

There was no threat, but Hildreth's demonstration showed what's possible with AI-powered cameras. If a gunman were in one of his schools, the cameras could quickly identify th...