Instagram Uses AI System To Identify And Verify Users’ Age

Instagram is experimenting with a new AI feature that can guess a user’s age by scanning their face. 

The tool, built by Yoti, will help the platform ensure that users are 13 and meet Instagram’s minimum age requirement. Yoti has been used across various agencies, including the UK government and German digital regulators. 

Previously, Instagram did very little to validate the age of its users despite its minimum age policy. After scrutiny from both privacy and child safety professionals, the firm has incorporated new means of verifying a user’s age. 

Now, in order to verify their age, Instagram users can either send in pictures of their ID, provide social vouching, or use the AI tool. 

For social vouching, the company will ask three mutual followers (who are over 18) to confirm the user’s age. 

The more advanced procedure though is its AI estimation tool, which requires users to send a video selfie to Yoti that will guess their age based on facial signals. However, these signals have not been outlined. 

So far, Yoti’s services have been found to be less accurate in identifying the age of women with darker skin. However, an analysis of its system from 2020 shows that Yoti was 98.89% accurate in guessing whether someone was at least 18.