Technology companies are facing increasing pressure from governments around the world to implement stricter measures to verify users’ ages, amid concerns about online exploitation, the mental health of minors, and the spread of AI-generated sexual images involving children.
Last year, Meta launched a technology that proactively searches for accounts suspected to belong to minors, even when an incorrect birth date is entered, and places those accounts under special protection measures.
In a company post, Meta said that this technology will be expanded to cover 27 countries in the European Union, adding that it will also be applied to Facebook in the United States for the first time, before later extending to the United Kingdom and the European Union in June.
Meta explained that it relies on advanced artificial intelligence tools that go beyond simply verifying the entered age, including analyzing user profiles and digital behavior to identify signals indicating that an account may belong to a minor.
The measures also include strengthening anti-evasion technologies to prevent users suspected of being minors from creating new accounts using misleading information.