Apparently we have come a long way from when I used to have to ID kids buying M-rated games when I worked as a cashier at Best Buy. The ESRB is now pitching the FTC on new technology called “Privacy-Protected Facial Age Estimation” as a way for parents to give consent for kids buying games they’re not allowed to purchase otherwise (via GI.biz). This would be a tool that developers could implement in their individual games alongside other more traditional methods of age verification.
The tech is exactly as insane-sounding as you think it is. This is through a digital ID firm called Yoti and an Epic Games subsidiary SuperAwesome, and has people take a photo of themselves, the system checks if it’s a “live” face in frame, then the photo goes to a server where AI tech deduces how old the person is and if they can give consent for the purchase for the minor. It is not IDing a specific person as facial “recognition,” only estimating the age they are so permissions can be given.
I did not even know this tech existed at all, but Yoti claims that 99.7% of the time it can detect through a person’s face is a minor or not. And ways to cheat the system, ie. a sibling or babysitting trying to buy a game for a minor, does not work as the system considers things like whether say, an 18 year old could have a 14 year old kid.
The system gives a real “my Privacy-Protected Facial Age Estimation system is raising a lot of questions about privacy protection already answered by the name” vibe here, but Yoti claims the images, which include those of minors, are deleted and never used even for training purposes. This tech is already in use in some areas outside the US, and they want the FTC to approve it for use inside the US now.
In the EU and UK, Yoti says that the tech “works” because 35% of users in the EU and UK get rejected because they are under age. They also claim it’s “inclusive” for people who don’t have credit cards, passports, driver’s licenses or SSNs.
This all sounds…very dystopian, despite supposedly good intentions. I’m just not sure if kids sneakily buying Call of Duty or GTA 5 is worth using some sort of AI based “guess my age” tech that scans both adults and minors’ faces, no matter what privacy protections are supposedly in place. Truly, we’ve never seen any privacy protections fail in tech before, right?
We’ll see if the FTC bites on this, though they haven’t been on a terribly good decision-making streak as of late.
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