August 15, 2025
YouTube is slowly rolling out an AI program that scans users search history and personal data to verify age.
YouTube will soon be implementing an age-verification process — leadership claims the move is aimed at ensuring minors are subject to appropriate online protections. Just in case a minor misstates their age at the time of sign-up, the AI feature will catch the error and implement safety measures.
The company announced its intent to move forward in a blog post written by James Beser, YouTube’s director of product management. For now, a small control group across the U.S. will take part in the AI age estimation technology. The company did not indicate whether or not the beta testers will need to opt in to the trial.
“Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the U.S. to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults,” Beser said.
He added that the platform will “closely monitor this before we roll it out more widely,” highlighting the company’s cautious approach.
The system does not rely on the birthdate entered during account creation. Instead, it analyzes a range of behavioral signals. These include monitoring the types of videos watched, video searches, account age, and viewing categories. Based on the search, the AI program infers whether the user may be under 18.
If flagged as a minor, users will automatically receive protections similar to those existing under-18 settings. This includes disabling personalized ads, activation of digital wellbeing tools like “take a break” reminders, limitations on sensitive content recommendations, and privacy prompts.
YouTube users may be mistakenly misclassified as underage. They can verify their true age using one of three methods: uploading a government-issued ID, submitting a selfie, or providing a credit card.
The YouTube announcement comes after Spotify implemented its own age verification system. After the passing of the UK Online Safety Act, platforms that host “adult content” are now required to implement youth safety measures. Unlike YouTube, platforms in the UK are using more than AI content searches and analysis.
The UK Online Safety Act expands the scope of verification options. As well as face verifications, platforms are allowed to use banking information, online banking age verification, use of a digital identity wallet, age checks via credit card, age estimation via email address, and Photo-ID, which may require consumers to upload both a selfie and a copy of their government ID.
The U.S. has not yet adopted any government policy surrounding verification, yet it appears companies, like YouTube, are being preemptive in their company policy.
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