Amid wave of kids’ online safety laws, age-checking tech comes of age

Vendors generally charge well under $1 per check for ‌basic machine-only age assurance tools, though for large volumes the price is often as low as single-digit cents, said industry executives.

For years, tech companies successfully resisted pressure from child safety advocates to do more to keep kids off their services, claiming technical limitations would make any attempt to restrict access for teens ​impractical, overly broad or a security risk.

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Now, a growing list of governments is concluding those hurdles are not insurmountable, and pushing ahead with aggressive new age-checking requirements for social networks, AI chatbots and porn purveyors alike. Three months after Australia launched a ‌landmark ban on teen social media accounts, regulators across Europe, in Brazil and in a handful of U.S. states are moving to emulate it.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, seen ​as a likely Democratic candidate for president in 2028, joined the call last month, while US Republican President Donald Trump is also reportedly “taking an interest” in age limits, according to his daughter-in-law. Spurring ⁠them along are escalating concerns over online abuse and teen mental health, and a recent outcry over the spread of AI-generated child sexual abuse images, as well as increased confidence in the capabilities of “age assurance” software that backers say can suss out a person’s approximate age using facial analysis, parental approval, ID checks and other digital clues.

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have boosted the effectiveness and slashed the cost of those age-gating tools, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen regulators, child safety ‌advocates, independent researchers and vendors who perform the age checks for big tech companies, including TikTok, Facebook owner Meta and OpenAI.

“The age-assurance market has matured a lot in the last couple of years,” said Ariel Fox Johnson, a senior adviser to San Francisco-based Common Sense Media, a children’s online advocacy group. She pointed to improving technology, as well as the establishment of trade ‌groups, technical protocols and certification schemes standardising evaluation of the various tools’ effectiveness.