Meta Declares War on Under 13s: AI Will Analyze Users' Faces, Bodies, and Chats

Meta is strengthening its measures for the protection of minors on its platforms. After launching accounts for teenagers, the company announced a further step forward in its program with the introduction of new age verification systems based on artificial intelligence.

Can AI Understand a User's Age?

The new system developed by Meta is currently being rolled out, including in the European Union. According to what the company has stated, the goal is to strengthen control measures for minors and, in particular, to exclude individuals under the age of 13 from social media.

In this way, Meta aims to enforce age limits for access to social networks. The system developed by Meta should be able to automatically activate the protections in place for teenage accounts.

The company has explicitly mentioned the addition of "visual analysis through artificial intelligence," which will enhance age verification technology on the company's platforms. This way, Meta should be able to determine if a user has entered a false date of birth at the time of registration.

This technology allows for "scanning photos and videos for visual clues about a person's age that text might not detect," but it "does not involve facial recognition" as the AI analyzes "general themes and visual clues" such as height and bone structure to estimate age. The information obtained is then combined with text analysis and user interactions to identify the actual age of the account holder.

Additionally, Meta has confirmed that it is working on introducing a simplified system to enable other users on the platform to quickly report a minor's account. They are also in the process of defining new systems to strengthen measures against evasion in order to prevent the creation of new accounts.