YouTube announced Tuesday it will begin rolling out AI-powered age-estimation technology to identify users under 18.

“Back in February, we shared that we would soon introduce technology that would distinguish between younger viewers and adults to help provide the best and most age appropriate experiences and protections. 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’ll closely monitor this before we roll it out more widely,” YouTube said in a blog post.

“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. We’ve used this approach in other markets for some time, where it is working well. We are now bringing it to the US, and as we make progress we’ll roll it out in other markets. We will closely monitor the user experience, and partner with Creators to ensure that the entire ecosystem benefits from this update,” it continued.

From the YouTube Official Blog:

We will use AI to interpret a variety of signals that help us to determine whether a user is over or under 18. These signals include the types of videos a user is searching for, the categories of videos they have watched, or the longevity of the account.

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When the system identifies a teen user, we’ll automatically apply our age-appropriate experiences and protections, including:

  • disabling personalized advertising
  • turning on digital wellbeing tools
  • adding safeguards to recommendations, including limiting repetitive views of some kinds of content

If the system incorrectly estimates a user to be under 18, they will have the option to verify that they are 18 or over, such as using a credit card or a government ID. 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.

As 100 Percent Fed Up noted, Spotify is taking a similar approach for age verification checks in the United Kingdom.

Spotify Users Risk Losing Their Accounts For Failing To Complete New Digital ID Age Verification

The music streaming app will check whether users are adults before watching content labeled mature.

“We partner with Yoti, a trusted digital identity company, to help us identify if users are of eligible age to access some Spotify content and features, like Music videos that are labeled as 18+ by rightsholders,” a page on Spotify’s website reads.

“You may be presented with an age check when you try to access certain age restricted content, like music videos tagged 18+,” it continued.

“Some users will be asked to perform an age check when accessing certain age restricted content. You can do this by going through our facial age check. If this shows inaccurate results, you can always correct that with an ID verification,” it added.

“You cannot use Spotify if you don’t meet the minimum age requirements for the market you’re in. If you cannot confirm you’re old enough to use Spotify, your account will be deactivated and eventually deleted,” the page noted.

"First, Spotify in UK, and now YouTube in the US is going to do age checks. There is no way that this isn't some kind of globally coordinated attack on the freedom of access to media," one X user commented.

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CBS News shared additional details:

According to a recent Pew survey, YouTube is the most popular social media app among teens. Ninety percent of teens ages 13 to 17 said they used YouTube last year, compared with 63% who said they used TikTok.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan initially announced the age-detection technology in February. The new tool builds on other safety features like supervised accounts which allow parents to monitor their children's YouTube activity more closely.

YouTube has also leveraged AI to identify and remove content it considers harmful, although since President Trump took office in January for his second term, the social media platform has shifted its policy to emphasize "freedom of expression" over safety, The New York Times reported.

 

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