The information was published in a blog post on digital protection measures for children, teens and parents.
According to Google, this AI technology will be applied across many products, including YouTube, where users under 18 years old are restricted from accessing some services.
“This year, we will begin testing a machine learning-based age estimation model in the US,” said Jenn Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president of core technologies.
This model helps Google determine whether a user is over or under 18 and apply appropriate protections to provide an age-appropriate experience. The company also plans to expand this technology to more countries in the future.
The deployment of AI for age verification comes amid growing pressure from lawmakers to better protect children online. Meta launched a similar feature last September to detect users who might be lying about their age.
Google and many other tech companies are increasingly relying on AI for a variety of tasks and products. Using AI to police age-appropriate content is one of Google's latest moves in this area.
The new initiative is being rolled out by Google’s “Core” team, which went through a major restructuring last year that saw the company lay off hundreds of employees and move some roles to India and Mexico.
