YouTube announced on Tuesday it is planning to roll out a new age-estimation technology that will identify users under the age of 18. The new feature is intended to protect young teens from harmful content, the company says.
Powered by artificial intelligence, the tool will be able to assess a person’s age based on the types of videos they’ve watched, the categories of the videos, and how long the person has had their account — regardless of the birthday associated with it, James Beser, director of product management at YouTube, said in a statement on the platform’s blog.
If the technology identifies a person as under 18, it will take extra steps to regulate their content by disabling personalized advertising and limiting repetitive views of certain kinds of content, among other things. If YouTube incorrectly determines someone’s age, the user can upload a form of identification to fix the error.
“We will only allow users who have been inferred or verified as over 18 to view age-restricted content that may be inappropriate for younger users,” YouTube said in the blog post.