YouTube to gauge US users' ages with AI after UK and Australia add age checks
The rollout of the new feature comes one day after Australia's government announced it would ban children under 16 from using YouTube and less than a week after the UK implemented sweeping age checks on content on social networks.
YouTube's AI age verification on its home turf indicates it is putting into place a form of compliance with the Australian and UK requirements, despite its persistent opposition to age-check requirements.
'Over the next few weeks, we'll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the US to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults,' wrote James Beser, director of product management for YouTube Youth, in a blog post titled Extending our built-in protections to more teens on YouTube.
YouTube was promised an exemption from Australia's social media ban last year by the then communications minister, but the Australian government said on Monday that the platform would, in fact, be included in the country's ban on children under 16 using social networks. The ban is slated to take effect in December. Google, YouTube's parent company, strenuously advocated against the Australian ban and has threatened to sue to overturn it.
On 25 July, the UK's long-awaited Online Safety Act took effect. The law requires social media and other internet platforms to implement safety measures protecting children – preventing them from accessing pornography or content that promotes dangerous behavior – or face large fines.
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By testing the new AI tool in the US – the platform's second largest market after India – YouTube is following the example of other tech companies, which have in some cases followed tightened privacy regulations in the past by implementing stricter mandates for all their users. In the US, California often functions as a de facto tech regulator, both by virtue of playing host to many of Silicon Valley's biggest players and by passing stricter regulations than other states. Like Australia and the UK, some states in the US have passed age verification laws targeting social media sites, though these have not been interpreted as applying to YouTube.
When YouTube determines a user is teen or pre-teen, the site will disable personalized advertising, activate digital wellbeing features and put stricter content filters as well as behavioral restrictions into place.
YouTube's AI will assess a user's age via multiple behavioral factors, including what kind of videos the user searches for, the categories of videos they watch, and how long the account has been active, per its blog post.
'This technology will allow us to infer a user's age and then use that signal, regardless of the birthday in the account, to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections,' Beser wrote, adding that the company has used the technology in other markets prior to introducing it in the US.
If the AI's estimation is incorrect, YouTube says it will allow a user to verify their age with a credit card, a government ID or a selfie.
How the Australian government will ensure that under-16s stay away from the world's largest video site, one of the internet's primary destinations for both children and adults, remains an open question. In June, a test of the technology meant to estimate Australian users' ages was 'not guaranteed to be effective'.
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