YouTube is currently testing technology in the U.S. that uses artificial intelligence to identify users under 18 to potentially add restrictions on their accounts.
The Google-owned platform says this move has been designed to aim better protections for younger users. It began rolling out an “age-estimation” model in the U.S. which uses AI to determine if a user is underage regardless of the details they have entered into their account.
If the AI determines that a user is under 18, it will place restrictions on the account and add other security measures. YouTube says users will “have the option to verify your age (through government ID, selfie or a credit card) if you believe our age estimation model is incorrect.”
James Beser, senior director of product management for YouTube’s youth products, wrote 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.”
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The rollout of this AI will initially cover a “small set of users” in the U.S.
Beser also noted that YouTube has used machine learning to estimate users’ ages in other countries “for some time, where it is working well,” and that YouTube will “closely monitor the user experience, and partner with creators to ensure that the entire ecosystem benefits from this update.” The company also said that age estimation uses a variety of signals.
If the system determines that the user is under 18, they will be notified, and certain protections will be activated. These protections (which are already in place for users who mention they are under 18) include showing only non-personalized ads, enabling “digital wellbeing” tools by default including “take a break” and bedtime reminders, showing reminders about privacy when uploading a video or commenting publicly, minimizing recommendations of videos with content that could be “problematic if viewed in repetition,” and blocking access to videos that are age-restricted.
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Users will also apply additional protections for creators under 18, which include setting uploads as private by default and restricting the ability to earn from gifts on vertical live streams. While the video platform expects the changes to have “limited impact” for most creators, YouTube noted that “some creators may experience a shift in their audience categorized as teens (under 18). This may result in a decrease in ad revenue since we only serve non-personalized ads to those viewers.”
A number of users have raised privacy concerns over being required to show a credit card, ID, or selfie if they are wrongly flagged as underage. Some have shared their concerns on Reddit and X, using the hashtag #BoycottYouTube. Suzanne Bernstein, a lawyer for the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in an interview with tech news page Ars Technica: “Discomfort with certain appeals processes which require providing really sensitive personal information is totally understandable.”
Meanwhile, a YouTube spokesperson told CNN that its parent company Google “uses the world’s most advanced security to protect user data against threats, and users can choose the privacy settings that are right for them including deleting their data.”