YouTube to gauge US users’ ages with AI after UK and Australia add age checks
YouTube announced on Tuesday that it will begin to use artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users in the US, in order to show them age-appropriate content.
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 blogpost 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.
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