YouTube Will Start Using AI to Determine User's Age Based on Their Search History, Will Need to Upload Photo ID, Credit Card, or Selfie if Deemed Underage
Dexerto – YouTube’s age estimation system is coming to the United States and even if you’re well over 18, you might soon have to show Google your ID to prove it.
Starting August 13, YouTube will roll out its age estimation model in the US to determine if a user is under 18, regardless of the birthdate tied to their Google account.
The model uses AI and a range of signals — including YouTube activity and account age — to guess a user’s actual age. It will also base its decision off the types of videos a user is searching for and the categories of videos they have watched.
If it decides you’re a teen, YouTube will automatically apply content restrictions and digital wellbeing tools, limit personalized ads, and reduce exposure to “problematic” content.
Fuck you, YouTube. Not for this AI thing. But since I'm blogging about YouTube, I'm going to start by using this opportunity to air a personal grievance. Your ads are getting too annoying. Obviously you need to have ads, and I can pay $13.99/mo for ad-free YouTube if I so choose. But you've officially taken things too far. Nowadays, when the ads end, I'm not even taken back to my video. The ad just sits there frozen on my screen until I reach down and press the skip button. And if I take too long to reach down and press the skip button, another ad starts up and I have to sit through that until the skip button pops up again. It's not even a skip button anymore. It's a "return to my show" button. What if I'm in the shower? What if I'm trying to watch a YouTube video while driving? Do you know how irresponsible it is to make me take a hand off the wheel on a busy interstate just to resume my program? That's fucked up, YouTube.
Honestly, I probably would have paid for YouTube Premium by now, but since you do the thing where you intentionally make your ads as annoying as possible to try and strong arm me into it, I refuse to give in. So I will continue drying off my hand mid-shower so I can touch my phone. I will continue taking my hand off the wheel and putting society in danger to "skip" your advertisements after they're already complete. Hope nobody gets hurt. If somebody does, that's on you, YouTube.
(I want it on the record that I'm not actually watching YouTube on my phone while driving. But I will put on Mostly Sports or The Yak and listen to it like a podcast. And all that same stupid ad stuff still applies. Which is honestly even worse, because then I'm forced to actually take my eyes off the road to move on from the ad so I can get back to LISTENING to Plinko Day)
But this AI age verification thing that YouTube is rolling out... in a couple ways I kinda love it. It's gonna be kinda funny when a 30-year old man gets called out by YouTube for being a child because he has an unhealthy obsession with Labubu dolls. And I can't wait for the future when I have an exceptionally mature 12-year old son who's into smart adult things like Ancient Rome and the Criterion Collection. When YouTube's faulty AI flags him as a 35-year old adult and allows him to go down an ISIS recruitment video rabbit hole (out of morbid curiosity, not because my son wants to be a terrorist), I'll be able sue the shit out of them.
Realistically, how the hell is AI supposed to determine the difference between a 17-year old and an 18-year old? I have half a mind to think this is nothing more than a long con by Google (who owns YouTube), to collect the government ID's of every person in the world.
The Google-owned platform acknowledges that it could get estimations wrong, or at least acknowledges that users may “believe” they got it wrong.
“You’ll have the option to verify your age (through government ID, selfie, or a credit card) if you believe our age estimation model is incorrect,” YouTube explained in a new support update.
Every kid growing up nowadays is on YouTube before they can walk. So when they eventually turn 18, and are still being flagged as a minor, they're going to be forced to upload their photo ID (or credit card, or current selfie if either of those make you feel safer) to YouTube to prove their age. 80 years from now, they'll have that data on every person in the world.
I've given up on pretending to believe that companies like Google don't already have all of my personal information readily available to them. But still… that's exactly what this is going to result in.
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Another fun speculation I've seen is that this means YouTube is going to get into the porn business.
I certainly don't want that. I do not need my pornography on YouTube. I want my porn brought to me through the sketchiest channels possible. Somehow that seems safer than watching through Google, who's taking copious notes on every single thing I do on my computer.
Again, I'm sure Google is already getting that information anyways. But I don't want to hand my porn history directly to them. I would like for Google to continue doing us the courtesy of acquiring it behind our backs through shady means.
I've also seen a handful of tweets that say things of this nature.
I mean, that's… also probably right. Basically YouTube and Google seem to be using AI as an excuse to collect even more concrete information on us than they already have. Fucking, Google. You don't need AI to know our ages. You already know more about us than we know about ourselves. 20 years ago, I'm sure we all flippantly checked a box agreeing to "terms & conditions" that gave them permission to take over our webcams and file away all the personal information we enter into a computer until the day we die. All so we could log onto StumbleUpon.com. In our defense… that was a pretty sweet website. StumbleUpon was ahead of its time.
