Google Is Rolling Out AI-Powered Age Verification to More Services, and I’m Skeptical
Yesterday, I wrote about how YouTube is now using artificial intelligence to determine your age . The idea is this: instead of relying on the age associated with your account, YouTube looks at your activity on its platform and makes a decision based on how consistent it is with other users. If the AI thinks you’re an adult, you can keep watching; if it thinks you’re behaving like a teenager, it will impose restrictions and protect your account.
Now, Google is expanding its AI-powered age verification tools beyond its streaming video platform to other Google products. As with YouTube, Google is conducting initial testing on a small group of users and will expand the testing to more users based on the results. But over the next few weeks, your Google account may be targeted by this new AI, whose sole purpose is to estimate your age.
This AI is trained to track patterns in the behavior of users under 18 across Google products. This includes the types of information you might search for or the types of videos you watch on YouTube. Google is a bit cagey about the details, but suffice it to say that the AI likely tracks most, if not everything, you use Google and its products for.
Limitations and protection of teen Google accounts
We know about some of the restrictions and protections Google plans to implement when it determines a user is under 18. As I reported yesterday, this includes enabling YouTube’s Digital Wellbeing tools, such as reminders to stop watching videos and, if it’s late, bedtime recommendations. YouTube will also limit repeat viewings of certain types of content.
In addition to these YouTube changes, you’ll also find that you can no longer access the timeline in Maps . The timeline saves your Google Maps history, so you can essentially travel back in time and see where you’ve been. It’s a cool feature, but Google limits access to it to users 18 and older. So if the AI determines you’re underage, the timeline won’t be available to you.
You’ll also notice that your ads will be far less relevant to your interests and search history. Accounts under 18 don’t support personalized ads, which is a great choice for all of us, not just teenagers. While it’s great to limit targeted ads aimed at young people, as an adult, I definitely don’t want to see the fruits of web trackers’ labor in the form of pop-up ads. I try to turn off personalized ads whenever possible , but an ad blocker solves this problem entirely .
Finally, accounts under 18 won’t be able to access adult-only apps on the Play Store, which makes sense. If your account is marked as under 18, you won’t be able to download or use apps that are intended for people over 18.
If Google’s AI Makes a Mistake, It’s on You
Part of the problem with outsourcing this kind of work to AI is that it’s not perfect. It’s often wrong , and it’s sure to flag some adult accounts as underage. While the restrictions above aren’t too strict, you don’t want to have YouTube telling you to sleep or losing features like your Timeline.
Google is aware of this possibility and has a solution: if the AI gets it wrong, you can verify your age by uploading a government-issued ID or a selfie. The latter likely uses a different AI model to determine your age, which has its own flaws, but the point is this: Google is following the age verification trend started by other sites and services in the face of new laws passed by various governments . Age verification is slowly becoming the norm, requiring users to upload official IDs to prove they are really as old as they say they are.
I fully support protecting children online, but I would argue that there must be ways to do this without sacrificing the privacy of every online user.