“When it detects a user may be under 18, Google will notify them that it has changed some of their settings and will offer information about how users can verify their age with a selfie, credit card, or government ID.”
Selfies are useless as proof for young adults and people with a young face. No algorithm can tell a 17.11 yo from a 18 yo so it will flag every single one of them.
This is a way to normalize handing over your details for the next generations. Nothing more.
The good news isn that once teens figure out that other browsers and search engines don't stop them from finding porn they might stick with them.
I work in IDV and we have tons of ways to determine if a picture is fake.
Edit: oh lol, it’s not even that advanced. Using my searches (I don’t use google ever) and my YouTube history is gonna turn up some real interesting results.
I'd say it's bound to be more difficult for Google, as every Youtube comment for example, sounds like being made by an 8 yo. Whereas Meta can just tell. You're still on Facebook? Probably 50+... And on WhatsApp, the amount of boomer memes re-posted would be an immediate tell...
This just sounds like an excuse to get more training data. Like those companies that use AI to guess someone's age based on a photo while their website is covered in AI images.
“When it detects a user may be under 18, Google will notify them that it has changed some of their settings and will offer information about how users can verify their age with a selfie, credit card, or government ID.”
This will definitely not be used to get a massive amount of face and ID data from users who get misclassified as underage due to "glitches" and suddenly locked out from their Gmail accounts or Android phones. Nope, no sirree, that will never happen at all, Google wouldn't do such an unethical and evil thing!
Okay Google, if you can guess my age accurately to within a decade based on my youtube viewing history and whatever other data you can get, I will give you a cookie.