YouTube Implements A.I. Age Verification

[Snailsoft]

There has been a buzz around a not-so-new initiative from Google and YouTube that would put age verification in the hands of AI, and it’s rolling out in just a few days. The new system will determine whether users are 18 or not, and it’s being put in place next week. Before that, there are a few things to know.

YouTube recently made an announcement that made some waves throughout its userbase. A new age verification system will be instituted for all YouTube viewers, powered by an AI model that simply determines your age.

One of the main reasons some users are heavily concerned about the new age verification system comes down to the method of determination. In the past, users would need to input their birthday, which would tell YouTube how old you were. From there, certain content would be locked or allowed, depending on if you were older than 18.

The content wall is still set at 18, but instead of self-reporting, users won’t have a say in how old Google’s AI model thinks they are.

How YouTube knows your age
YouTube’s AI will likely be pretty good at guessing based on a few factors, but it’s not going to be 100% accurate. That’s where users are getting worried.

The company noted its determination process in a couple of announcement posts. Both stated that YouTube’s AI would be able to tell how old the viewer was based on what videos they are searching for, the categories of videos watched, and the age of the account.

Ideally, if you signed up for YouTube in 2007, the AI would have to reasonably assume you were 18. But what if you created the account recently, or it’s a new alternate account? Then that method is out the door.

From there, it comes down to content watched and searched for. While that may sound reasonable, some users have concerns that parents will be determined to be under 18, because they’re children are watching content on their device. Further, adults who simply like watching animated series or other content deemed to be appropriate for minors might be labeled as underage.

There are a few potential flaws to this system, and there are still a lot of questions to be answered about how well it works.

YouTube has noted that AI age verification has already been in place for some regions, and with high success rates. The company claims that the models used are even more advanced now, and they should be accurate.

These protections for teens are not new – we now have enhanced technology to more accurately determine whether or not a user is under 18 and are now able to extend these protections to more teenagers. We’ve used this approach in other markets for some time, where it is working well and we are now gradually rolling it out to the US.

Account limitations and alternative options
If YouTube determines you’re under 18, whether that’s true or not, there will be a few changes made to the account.

First, personalized ads will be turned off. This is likely one of the driving factors for the new system, as selling personalized ads for minors isn’t allowed in many regions. As most minors lie about their age on YouTube, the company could face legal trouble if it were found to be doing so.

YouTube is going a step further past the legal protections, noting that digital wellbeing tool will be enabled by default. That includes “take a break” messages and bedtime reminders. The app will also warn users about privacy concerns when they comment or upload a video.

In its announcement post, YouTube noted that users could verify their age via other means if the AI model deemed them to be underage. That includes uploading a government ID, taking a verification selfie, or uploading a credit card.

Top comment by todd lissner
Liked by 40 people
It's not always welcome. It's not protection it's censorship and totally unnecessary. It's an invasion of privacy, eeand well enough could have been left alone. People under 18 saw sexual content on cable tv years ago and in magazines etc. It doesnt mean it's ok to follow them or others around and demand personal information to 100 percent prevent it. Many adults will be labeled as under 18 for the reasons u said also and it's ridiculous. People all ages sometimes have odd schedules or can't sleep and don't need ' bedtime reminders "
View all comments
The latter option seems to be the least invasive, and most users are accustomed to linking their cards to just about any online service that asks. The former, however, are two very controversial options, and users with security concerns would like to avoid these options if possible.

In reality, your options come down to letting the AI determine your age, and if it’s wrong, verifying via a method you deem acceptable. If those options aren’t reasonable to you, YouTube doesn’t seem to offer any other verification methods.

As noted at the beginning of this article, YouTube plans on rolling this new system out on August 13. From that point forward, the content viewed and searched for will determine what age YouTube’s AI thinks you are. If it decides you’re a minor, you have limited options to let it know it’s wrong.

Protections for minors on apps and sites like YouTube are always welcome. In a perfect world, users would correctly identify themselves so that protections work as they should. If YouTube’s AI verification works well, then this will likely be another feature that users learn to get used to. If it doesn’t, creators may take issue with the new system.

 

[Snailsoft]

"Save me!"
Vincent Price, The Fly.
In 1958, The Fly, featured a scientist who discovers the secret of teleportation. In a mishap, a fly gets into the teleporter and the computer doesn't know what to do with two beings so it merged them into a monster.
Totally fiction, right?

In 2025, A.I. computers were asked to clean up and enhance a photo of Roy Rogers and Trigger.

In the same fashion as The Fly, the computers couldn't deal with multiple subjects and merged them into a monster.

This is the same A.I. YouTube and others are parading and praising, but the companies are not reporting how horrible the mistakes are.

 

[Snailsoft]

Air Canada found itself in court after one of the company's AI-assisted tools gave incorrect advice for securing a bereavement ticket fare. Facing legal action, Air Canada's representatives argued that they were not at fault for something their chatbot did.

Aside from the huge reputational damage possible in scenarios like this, if chatbots can't be believed, it undermines the already-challenging world of airplane ticket purchasing. Air Canada was forced to return almost half of the fare due to the error.

 

[Snailsoft]

Welcome to New York City, the metropolis that never sleeps and the city with the largest AI rollout gaffe in recent memory. A chatbot called MyCity was found to be encouraging business owners to perform illegal activities. According to the chatbot, you could steal a portion of your workers' tips, go cashless and pay them less than minimum wage.

 

[Snailsoft]

In 2016, Microsoft released a Twitter bot called Tay, which was meant to interact as an American teenager, learning as it went. Instead, it learned to share radically inappropriate tweets. Microsoft blamed this development on other users, who had been bombarding Tay with reprehensible content. The account and bot were removed less than a day after launch. It's one of the touchstone examples of an AI project going sideways.
That was a decade ago

 

[Snailsoft]

In 2023, Sports Illustrated was accused of deploying AI to write articles. This led to the severing of a partnership with a content company and an investigation into how this content came to be published.

 

[Snailsoft]

In 2021, leaders in the Dutch parliament, including the prime minister, resigned after an investigation found that over the preceding eight years, more than 20,000 families were defrauded due to a discriminatory algorithm. The AI in question was meant to identify those who had defrauded the government's social safety net by calculating applicants' risk level and highlighting any suspicious cases. What actually happened was that thousands were forced to pay with funds they did not have for child care services they desperately needed.

 

[Snailsoft]

The National Eating Disorder Association caused quite a stir when it announced that it would replace its human staff with an AI program. Shortly after, users of the organization's hotline discovered that the chatbot, nicknamed Tessa, was giving advice that was harmful for those with an eating disorder. There have been accusations that the move toward the use of a chatbot was also an attempt at union busting. It's further proof that public-facing medical AI can cause disastrous consequences if it's not ready or able to help the masses.

 

[Snailsoft]

In 2015, an Amazon AI recruiting tool was found to discriminate against women. Trained on data from the previous 10 years of applicants, the vast majority of whom were men, the machine learning tool had a negative view of resumes that used the word "women's" and was less likely to recommend graduates from women's colleges. The team behind the tool was split up in 2017, although identity-based bias in hiring, including racism and ableism, has not gone away.

 

[Snailsoft]

Google had to remove the ability to search for gorillas on its AI software after results retrieved images of Black people instead. Other companies, including Apple, have also faced lawsuits over similar allegations.

 

[Snailsoft]

Normally, when we talk about the threat of AI, we mean it in an existential way: threats to our job, data security or understanding of how the world works. What we're not usually expecting is a threat to our safety.

When first launched, Microsoft's Bing AI quickly threatened a former Tesla intern and a philosophy professor, professed its undying love to a prominent tech columnist, and claimed it had spied on Microsoft employees.

 

[Snailsoft]

While Tesla tends to dominate headlines when it comes to the good and the bad of driverless AI, other companies have caused their own share of carnage. One of those is GM's Cruise. An accident in October 2023 critically injured a pedestrian after they were sent into the path of a Cruise model. From there, the car moved to the side of the road, dragging the injured pedestrian with it.

That wasn't the end. In February 2024, the State of California accused Cruise of misleading investigators into the cause and results of the injury.

 

[Snailsoft]

An investigation by the BBC found that social media platforms are using AI to delete footage of possible war crimes that could leave victims without the proper recourse in the future. Social media plays a key part in war zones and societal uprisings, often acting as a method of communication for those at risk. The investigation found that even though graphic content that is in the public interest is allowed to remain on the site, footage of the attacks in Ukraine published by the outlet was very quickly removed.

 

[Snailsoft]

Research has found that AI models meant to support natural language processing tools, the backbone of many public-facing AI tools, discriminate against those with disabilities. Sometimes called techno- or algorithmic ableism, these issues with natural language processing tools can affect disabled people's ability to find employment or access social services. Categorizing language that is focused on disabled people's experiences as more negative — or, as Penn State puts it, "toxic" — can lead to the deepening of societal biases.

 

[Snailsoft]

AI-powered translation and transcription tools are nothing new. However, when used to assess asylum seekers' applications, AI tools are not up to the job. According to experts, part of the issue is that it's unclear how often AI is used during already-problematic immigration proceedings, and it's evident that AI-caused errors are rampant.

 

[Snailsoft]

Apple's Face ID has had its fair share of security-based ups and downs, which bring public relations catastrophes along with them. There were inklings in 2017 that the feature could be fooled by a fairly simple dupe, and there have been long-standing concerns that Apple's tools tend to work better for those who are white. According to Apple, the technology uses an on-device deep neural network, but that doesn't stop many people from worrying about the implications of AI being so closely tied to device security.

 

[Snailsoft]

In June 2021, the fertility tracking application Flo Health was forced to settle with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission after it was found to have shared private health data with Facebook and Google.

With Roe v. Wade being struck down in the U.S. Supreme Court and with those who can become pregnant having their bodies scrutinized more and more, there is concern that these data might be used to prosecute people who are trying to access reproductive health care in areas where it is heavily restricted.

 

[Snailsoft]

Politicians are used to being recognized, but perhaps not by AI. A 2018 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union found that Amazon's Rekognition AI, a part of Amazon Web Services, incorrectly identified 28 then-members of Congress as people who had been arrested. The errors came with images of members of both main parties, affecting both men and women, and people of color were more likely to be wrongly identified.

While it's not the first example of AI's faults having a direct impact on law enforcement, it certainly was a warning sign that the AI tools used to identify accused criminals could return many false positives.

 

[Snailsoft]

In one of the worst AI-related scandals ever to hit a social safety net, the government of Australia used an automatic system to force rightful welfare recipients to pay back those benefits. More than 500,000 people were affected by the system, known as Robodebt, which was in place from 2016 to 2019. The system was determined to be illegal, but not before hundreds of thousands of Australians were accused of defrauding the government. The government has faced additional legal issues stemming from the rollout, including the need to pay back more than AU$700 million (about $460 million) to victims.

 

[Snailsoft]

According to researchers, a year of AI training takes 126,000 liters (33,285 gallons) of water — about as much in a large backyard swimming pool. In a world where water shortages are becoming more common, and with climate change an increasing concern in the tech sphere, impacts on the water supply could be one of the heavier issues facing AI. Plus, according to the researchers, the power consumption of AI increases tenfold each year.