Meta is implementing AI-powered safeguards designed to detect if users of Facebook and Instagram are underage. The AI will be using a combination of text analysis and visual scanning to identify and remove accounts it believes belong to users under 13.
Accurate age detection has been a huge problem for companies since the dawn of the internet. Every website has some form of safeguard that should prevent underage users from registering, but those systems are largely ineffective. In some cases, all an underage kid has to do to access a certain website is to lie about their age. And since most websites don't implement strict age-verification rules (even when they try to do it, that decision is met with backlash from users), there's no way to verify the actual age of users.
Meta hopes to solve that problem with AI. Meta's AI will now scan photos and videos for physical cues such as height and bone structure to estimate whether an account holder is likely underage. Combined with existing text analysis that looks for signals like birthday posts or references to school grades, Meta says the system can catch underage accounts that would otherwise slip through.
Hopefully, Meta has trained its AI not to automatically classify moustaches as an adult feature, because children are actively using this prop to bypass age verification on websites across the internet.
The company is explicit that this is not facial recognition. The new AI system is not identifying who a person is, but rather estimating their general age range from visual context. Although some people might be curious to find out how this "abstract" age-verification system that doesn't require facial recognition works.
On the parental side, Meta will begin sending notifications to parents in the US on both Facebook and Instagram this month, prompting them to check and confirm their teen's listed age on the platforms. This makes parents even more present in their children's digital lives, as Meta is already telling them what their kids are asking AI and searching on the platforms.
Source: Meta
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