YouTube to Gauge US Users’ Ages With AI After UK and Australia Add Age Checks
upstart writes:
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.
[...] 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 blogpost.
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 had used the technology in other markets before 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.
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