By Michaela Gordoni
YouTube is on a mission to use AI for good to detect if viewers are under the age of 18.
It will use AI to “interpret a variety of signals” to estimate if someone is their stated age. It will look at users’ video searches and categories of content the user watches to estimate age, Bloomberg reported last Tuesday.
“This will happen regardless of the birth date you entered when creating your account,” YouTube said. “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.” The US test is will begin on Aug. 13 on a small number of users.
YouTube’s plan comes in line with age-verification legislation that’s been enacted in several states.
If the AI determines that a user is under 18, it will automatically activate safeguards like non-personalized ads, “take a break” pop-ups and privacy reminders.
“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… We will only allow users who have been inferred or verified as over 18 to view age-restricted content that may be inappropriate for younger users,” James Beser, director of product management for YouTube Kids and Youth, said.
Related: AI Comes to Your YouTube Recommendations
Anyone over the age of 18 whose account is mistaken to be used by a child will have to verify real age with a selfie, government ID or credit card.
YouTube promises that the change will have a limited impact on content creators.
It aims to monitor its test runs closely before rolling the feature out on a large scale.
This is an important update for children’s safety. Pew Research recently found that YouTube is the No. 1 most popular social media app among teenagers. About 90% of teens aged 13 to 17 said they used YouTube last year. Only 63% said they used TikTok.
Australia just announced it will ban children under 16 from using YouTube, revoking its promise to exclude the platform from its country-wide social media ban for kids. The UK just started sweeping age checks on social media platforms after invoking its new Online Safety Act, The Guardian reported.
There are countless online dangers for children, and YouTube holds a lot of them. As it becomes more vigilant to protect kids on its platform, others, like Instagram, Roblox and more, should take note.
Read Next: Google Trains AI on YouTube Videos—What That Means for Creators
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