Facebook Will Use Age-Confirming AI to Check if You're Old Enough to Date

It is possible that Meta will ask you to send a video of your face before they will allow you to flirt with other people on Facebook.

Meta is updating its Facebook Dating service to detect if a user is lying about their age. After that happens, Facebook said it will prompt them to verify their age, in which case they can either upload a form of ID, such as a driver's license, which the company said will be private and won't be visible on the public profile. The company will send out a third party who uses artificial intelligence to verify a user's age based on their facial features, if they use the other option.

The UK-based Yoti was tapped to verify the age of its users earlier this year. When a user attempts to change their birth date from under 18 to over 18 the system asks for an ID or a video selfies. This will be the first time Meta has brought the technology to the US. Yoti doesn't identify you or use your selfies for anything else, according to it.

Humans and automatic systems analyze the documents when users try to verify their identity with the physical ID route. Meta says it can keep the ID for up to a year before it is deleted.

Meta was contacted by Gizmodo to find out how it determines if users are lying about their age and to find out how long the company stores their IDs. If we hear more, we'll update this story.

Yoti said in a post that its facial estimation technology is a privacy-preserving solution that wipes out all images after they are used to determine users' ages. The machine learning model created by the company correctly estimates the age of 13 to 17 year olds 99.65% of the time. The process is positive for those under the age of 11.

The company's system works to detect features of a human face without analyzing the entire face. Yoti has a system for users to prove their age without sharing their personal information.

Meta's director of data governance said in Yoti's post that their tools are working. The company may push this type of product to different markets who use Facebook Dating or require age verification.

The use of social media by children and teens will soon be subject to regulations and fines. Nine states are investigating the impact Meta's apps have on young users even though the company has noted certain features are age restricted. Meta and other social media apps have been the subject of many lawsuits.