Meta will begin using artificial intelligence to scan photos and videos for visual clues to see if a user is under 13 and will have to be removed from Facebook and Instagram, the company was announced on Tuesday. Those visual cues include a person’s height or bone structure, he said.
“We want to be clear: this is not facial recognition,” Meta explained in its blog post. “Our AI looks at general themes and visual cues, for example height or bone structure, to estimate someone’s general age. It doesn’t identify the specific person in the image. By combining this visual information with our text analysis and interactions, we can significantly increase the number of underage accounts we find and remove.
The visual analysis system is now working in select countries, but Meta says it’s working on a wider rollout.
Meta says this system is part of its efforts to keep children under 13 off its platforms. These efforts include using artificial intelligence to analyze entire profiles for contextual clues, such as birthday celebrations or school grade reports. The company looks for these badges in different formats such as posts, comments, bios, captions and more. Meta plans to expand this technology to more parts of its apps, including Instagram Live and Facebook Groups, in the future.
If Meta determines that a person may be a minor, it will disable their account and the user will be required to prove their age using the company’s age verification process in order to prevent their account from being deleted.
The announcement comes weeks after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and putting children at risk. The company was also ordered to implement fundamental changes to its platforms. Meta has since threatened close social networking services in the state.
It’s worth noting that this case is one of several lawsuits Meta and other Big Tech companies are facing over child safety.
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Meta also announced on Tuesday that it is expanding its technology that automatically places teenagers into stricter “teen accounts” on Instagram to 27 countries in the EU and Brazil. These teen accounts place users in a stricter account experience with additional safeguards, such as only receiving DMs from people they follow or are already connected with, hiding harmful comments, and setting accounts to private by default.
In addition, Meta said it is expanding the technology to Facebook in the US for the first time, followed by the UK and EU in June.
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