{"id":33536,"date":"2025-07-30T22:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/33536\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T22:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:57:10","slug":"youtube-to-gauge-us-users-ages-with-ai-after-uk-and-australia-add-age-checks-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/33536\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube to gauge US users\u2019 ages with AI after UK and Australia add age checks | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

YouTube<\/a> announced on Tuesday that it will begin to use artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users in the US, in order to show them age-appropriate content.<\/p>\n

The rollout of the new feature comes one day after Australia\u2019s government announced it would ban children under 16 from using YouTube and less than a week after the UK implemented sweeping age checks<\/a> on content on social networks.<\/p>\n

YouTube\u2019s AI age verification on its home turf indicates it is putting into place a form of compliance with the Australian and UK requirements, despite its persistent opposition to age-check requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the next few weeks, we\u2019ll 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,\u201d wrote James Beser, director of product management for YouTube Youth, in a blogpost<\/a> titled Extending our built-in protections to more teens on YouTube.<\/p>\n

YouTube was promised an exemption from Australia\u2019s social media ban last year by the then communications minister, but the Australian government said on Monday that the platform would, in fact, be included in the country\u2019s ban on children under 16 using social networks. The ban is slated to take effect in December. Google<\/a>, YouTube\u2019s parent company, strenuously advocated<\/a> against the Australian ban and has threatened to sue to overturn it.<\/p>\n

On 25 July, the UK\u2019s long-awaited Online Safety Act<\/a> took effect. The law requires social media and other internet platforms to implement safety measures protecting children \u2013 preventing them from accessing pornography or content that promotes dangerous behavior \u2013 or face large fines.<\/p>\n

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By testing the new AI<\/a> tool in the US \u2013 the platform\u2019s second largest market after India \u2013 YouTube is following the example of other tech companies, which have in some cases followed tightened privacy regulations in the past by implementing stricter mandates for all their users. In the US, California<\/a> often functions as a de facto tech regulator, both by virtue of playing host to many of Silicon Valley\u2019s biggest players and by passing stricter regulations than other states. Like Australia and the UK, some states in the US have passed age verification laws targeting social media sites, though these have not been interpreted as applying to YouTube.<\/p>\n

When YouTube determines a user is teen or pre-teen, the site will disable personalized advertising, activate digital wellbeing features and put stricter content filters as well as behavioral restrictions into place.<\/p>\n

YouTube\u2019s AI will assess a user\u2019s age via multiple behavioral factors, including what kind of videos the user searches for, the categories of videos they watch, and how long the account has been active, per its blogpost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis technology will allow us to infer a user\u2019s age and then use that signal, regardless of the birthday in the account, to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections,\u201d Beser wrote, adding that the company had used the technology in other markets before introducing it in the US.<\/p>\n

If the AI\u2019s estimation is incorrect, YouTube says it will allow a user to verify their age with a credit card, a government ID or a selfie.<\/p>\n

How the Australian government will ensure that under-16s stay away from the world\u2019s largest video site, one of the internet\u2019s primary destinations for both children and adults, remains an open question. In June, a test of the technology<\/a> meant to estimate Australian users\u2019 ages was \u201cnot guaranteed to be effective\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"YouTube announced on Tuesday that it will begin to use artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-33536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}