Instagram is rolling out AI age checks for underage users, Meta reported. The technology will make teens safer on the service by identifying accounts that have inflated their age, helping parents manage their children’s social media.
After introducing teen accounts last year, Instagram is taking a step further in protecting minors online. The company is starting a trial in the US of an AI technology that will find accounts of users who have faked their birth dates and put them in an appropriate age category. The mechanism is not new – Meta has been using it for some time – but it is set to be used more widely for accounts of minors from now on.
If the AI determines that the age of an underage user is overstated, it will categorize them as teen accounts. The AI will take into account factors such as the date the profile was created or the type of content the teen is interacting with.
Instagram accounts for teens under protection
Meta began rolling out teen accounts on Instagram last year, and the feature is now rolling out to Facebook and Messenger. Parents can control their underage children’s profiles, but if they’re under 16, any changes to settings (such as blurring suspicious images) will require parental consent, including live streaming.
Underage users can only receive messages from people they follow or have previously chatted with. Instagram will notify young people if they use the service for more than an hour, and a “sleep mode” will be in place from 10pm to 7am to turn off notifications.
Parents better informed
Instagram introduced teen profiles in response to parents' expectations that their children would be better protected on social media. In reference to recent information, guardians are now to be sensitized to the importance of providing the appropriate age by their child. Meta is also aware that parents do not always have time to verify the settings of a teenager's account, so AI is to help them with this by automatically marking it as a minor's profile, while allowing adults to change the age category.
The new rules for underage accounts coincide with information that Meta is to use adult posts on Facebook and Instagram in the EU at the end of May to develop an AI model. The company wants to teach AI to recognize humorous or sarcastic content based on the specifics of individual countries, but anyone can object to the use of their data. The new rules will not apply to teenagers.
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