Meta Using AI to Verify Ages of Facebook Dating Users

December 05, 2022

The world of AI is expanding. In a blog post posted today, Meta announced that they are testing an AI face-scanning tool for age verification on the Facebook Dating app. Users of Facebook dating have to be 18 years old to join. This new age detection technology is part of the company’s efforts to ensure”age-appropriate experiences” on Facebook Dating.

We’re expanding our age verification tech to @Facebook Dating in the US to help keep the service exclusive to people over 18 yrs old. Thanks to our partnership w/ @getyoti we’re offering multiple methods for ppl to verify their age, including ID upload & video selfies. –> pic.twitter.com/PKilafLkiD

— Rob Sherman (@rmsherman) December 5, 2022

Meta is working with the age verification software company, Yoti, again for this new policy. If a user on Facebook Dating is detected as someone under 18, the user will have two options; a video selfie where Yoti will estimate your age based on your features or an upload of your ID.

Meta ensures that the video selfie is deleted after Yoti has been able to detect your age. They further assert that the AI face-scanning tool can not recognize your identity but your age. As for the option of uploading a copy of your ID, Meta states that your information is encrypted and will give users options of how long they want their ID saved on their account.

Meta has found some success with more rigorous age verification on Instagram. After implementing the age verification option in June, the app declared that it was able to prevent “96% of the teens who attempted to edit their birthdays from under 18 to 18 or over”.

“We have found that 81% of people presented with our menu of options chose to use Yoti’s video selfie to verify their age,” writes Erika Finkle, Meta’s Director of Data Governance.

Yoti’s success rate is high according to reports from the company. The AI technology was 99.65% able to detect that 13 to 17 years were under the age of 23.

“Enabling young people to thrive and be safe online is of the utmost importance. So we’re delighted to continue our work with Meta to create age-appropriate experiences, this time on Facebook Dating…” said Julie Dawson, Yoti’s Chief Policy & Regulatory Officer.