Facebook has begun testing new ways for users on its dating app, Facebook Dating, to verify their age is 18 or above.
The company today made the announcement in a blog post, noting that the goal is to ensure that only adults are using the service, and to continue its efforts in preventing minors from accessing it.
Meta says it’s deploying an artificial intelligence (AI) face scanning tool, “a new technology in age detection technology” it claims will understand where people have misrepresented how old they are.
“If we detect someone may be under the age of 18 and trying to use Facebook Dating, we will prompt them to verify their age,” Meta says.
Suspected users will to choose from have two verification options;
- Take a video selfie where they record their face or then a still image from the video is shared with a third-party company, Yoti for age verification. Yoti uses technology that estimates a user’s age based on facial features. Afterward, the image is deleted.
- They can choose to verify their age by uploading their ID to Facebook, where it’s encrypted and then stored, the company says. Users can manage how long their ID is saved, notes the company, though its own help documentation notes that it may store IDs for up to 1 year.
This isn’t the first time Meta is using Yoti for age verification purposes. It started testing the AI tool in June to check Instagram users to verify their age.
Yoti claims its technology has a 99.6 percent success rate in correctly identifying people between the ages of 13 and 17 as being under the age of 23.
The age estimation technology has performed over 500 million checks worldwide, and the AI company claims it is being used by a range of businesses and industries around the world including social media, gaming and age-restricted e-commerce.
Meta reports that age verification has helped to sort out “hundreds of thousands” of users into the appropriate versions of the app, and that 81% of Instagram users who are prompted to verify their age choose to do so using the Yoti selfie option.
Meta investment in various AI-based age identification systems comes as regulators have been putting more pressure on tech companies to implement minimal precautions.
