YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it

YouTube is rolling out a new AI system meant to ensure young users are protected by its teen safety features. nna Barclay/Getty Images via CNN Newsource

YouTube will begin guessing users’ ages using artificial intelligence on Wednesday, as part of an effort to prevent kids from accessing inappropriate content online.

It’s part of a broader push to make social media safer for young people, but some users are already worried about what it will mean for their privacy and experience on the platform.

The technology is designed to determine whether a viewer is an adult or a minor based on their activity on the platform — regardless of the birthdate they submitted when they signed up. The tool is being tested with a limited number of U.S. users for now, but it’s expected to be rolled out more widely in the coming months.

If the tool identifies a user as a minor, YouTube will automatically apply its existing teen safety measures to their account. That includes restrictions on certain kinds of sensitive content, such as violent or sexually suggestive videos. Adult users incorrectly identified as minors will have to upload a government ID, credit card or a selfie to prove their age.

Some YouTube users are already fretting about getting incorrectly flagged by the technology, and privacy experts have raised concerns about adults handing over sensitive personal information to verify their age.

Here’s what we know about the new system.

How will YouTube’s AI age verification work?

The system relies on signals such as the types of videos a user searches for and watches, and how long their account has been active, to determine whether they are under the age of 18.

Users identified by the AI as minors will automatically be opted-in to the platform’s teen safety measures, including restrictions on certain kinds of content, adjusted recommendations, prohibitions on repetitive viewing of certain types of content, “take a break” reminders and disabled personalized advertising.

YouTube’s new AI age verification system will work only for logged-in users, so young people could still get around some of the safety measures by accessing the site without an account. However, signed-out users can’t access age-restricted content.

Why is YouTube doing this?

YouTube and other social media platforms are cracking down on age verification measures after facing criticism that teens could circumvent their safeguards by signing up with a fake birthdate. Those concerns come amid broader scrutiny from parents and lawmakers who have long worried such sites harm kids’ safety and mental health.

Meta last year said it would similarly use AI to identify when teen users lie about their age on Instagram so that it could apply expanded youth safety protections. And TikTok uses the technology to detect users who may be under 13 years old, the minimum age to be on the platform.

Several other online platforms — including Reddit and Discord — have also started verifying some users’ ages because of new rules under the UK’s Online Safety Act. The law’s child safety provisions went into effect last month.

YouTube said its AI age verification system has shown promise in other countries prior to Wednesday’s U.S. rollout.

Why are some users worried?

Some YouTube users are already up in arms over the idea of having to hand over a credit card, ID or selfie (in other words, biometric data) to keep using the adult version of YouTube if they’re incorrectly flagged as a teen. Some have shared their frustrations on X and Reddit with the hashtag #boycottyoutube.

Suzanne Bernstein, a lawyer for the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, raised concerns about how YouTube will manage that data in an interview with tech news site Ars Technica. “Discomfort with certain appeals processes which require providing really sensitive personal information is totally understandable,” she said.

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.”

The spokesperson added that YouTube will not retain data from users’ IDs or credit cards to use for advertising purposes.

By Clare Duffy, CNN