 "Instagram to use AI to catch teens faking their age")
Instagram’s parent company, Meta, will use artificial intelligence to detect if teens fake their age on the app, as the tech giant rolls out sweeping measures to protect kids under 18 after facing flak over its privacy policies.
The company said on Monday that Meta has been using AI to identify people’s ages for some time, adding that Instagram will now “proactively” use the technology to detect accounts of underage users it suspects of using inaccurate birthdates when they signed up.
Last year, Instagram rolled out teen accounts designed specifically for underage users after it was criticised for affecting the lives of young people. Earlier this month, the teen accounts feature was extended to Meta’s other platforms, Facebook and Messenger.
How will AI help?
If it is determined that a user is misrepresenting their age, the account will automatically become a teen account, which has more restrictions than an adult account. Teen accounts are private by default. Private messages are restricted, so teens can only receive them from people they follow or are already connected to.
“Sensitive content,” such as videos of people fighting or those promoting cosmetic procedures, will be limited, Meta said. Teens will also get notifications if they are on Instagram for more than 60 minutes, and a “sleep mode” will be enabled that turns off notifications and sends auto-replies to direct messages from 10 pm until 7 am.
The company said that it has trained its AI model to look for signals indicative of a user’s underage, like the type of content the account interacts with, profile information and when the account was created.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsNo livestreaming
Earlier this month, Meta announced that it will discontinue the livestreaming feature on Instagram for teens in an effort to make the platform safe for underage users.
Under the new safety measures, teens under the age of 16 will no longer be able to live-stream from their accounts without parental permission. They will also require their parents permission to switch off the feature that blurs sensitive content.
With inputs from agencies
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