When I was younger, my mother would often warn me about the dangers of the internet. She’d warn me not to talk to strangers, not to visit shady websites or click on links if I didn’t know where they went. One thing she was especially clear about was “not putting all my business out there.” “Business,” in this case, refers to my age, my birthday, my home address, my credit card details and the funky numbers on the back, anything that would give away my identity or safety to ne’er-do-wells and shady people.
We’re coming dangerously close to an age where “putting all your business out there” will be required in order to use the internet at all, and a future like that is a dangerous one to live in.
AI is on the rise in several aspects of our society, especially in the media industry. The artistic, cinematic, and gaming worlds are slowly being invaded by what people know as “AI slop.” What was once a tool meant to essentially utilize the features of your phone or computer through voice command, like Tony Stark’s JARVIS, has steadily evolved over time into an entity almost its own, taking over parts of our daily life for better or for worse. People have taken much more notice of the worse.
Age verification is nothing new on certain websites, with many adult websites prompting the user to only enter if they are 18 years old or older, and some having slightly stronger security, including email verification or entering one’s birthday.
AI age verification, however, has been said to increase these security measures, locking users out of using certain resources until or unless they proved they were of age to use these resources. The means of doing this? Submitting credit card information, face biometrics, or even your government ID. The goal? Allegedly to protect children from dangerous websites or shady individuals.
Reading this, one can easily notice several things wrong with these ideas. The internet, however private or incognito it claims to be, is one of the most revealing places to visit. Every bit of information placed on it can be saved, captured, downloaded and uploaded all around the world in a matter of seconds. Personal information on the Internet is already considered surrendering key parts of your identity just to use and interact with it. Submitting your credit card information or government ID is essentially asking someone to steal your identity and use it for nefarious purposes.
According to the FBI’s 2024 Crime Report, over 800,000 complaints have been filed for suspected internet crime, with personal data breaches reported to be one of the top three cyber crimes experienced. Many millions more suffer these crimes worldwide, showing just how dangerous putting yourself out there can truly be.
Several websites and platforms are implementing these methods, locking users out of certain features unless certain sensitive information is entered in. Roblox, YouTube, Minecraft, Spotify, Reddit, and even Discord have implemented AI age verification services, or plan to do so in future updates.
Discord, a platform that has evolved greatly from its original purpose of gaming chat and hangouts with like-minded individuals, has announced a “teen-by-default” update rolling out in early March. Every Discord user will be locked out of using certain age-restricted features unless their AI system determines that the user is an adult, assuming them to be under the age of 18 otherwise. The AI proves this by observing how said user has utilized Discord, perusing messages, content, and interactions with people and servers. Should it not determine the user to be of age, it will lock certain features behind submission of biometric face data or the user’s government ID. Discord has said that the majority of users will still be able to use Discord normally, and that face scans and ID photos would be kept on the user’s device and immediately deleted afterwards.
This is coming right off the heels of Discord suffering a massive data breach this past October, revealing highly sensitive information and affecting more than 70,000 users of the platform. Following this, not only was Discord’s AI age verification implementation highly untrustworthy at best, the claims about its safety were proven outright false. Discord was partnering with a third-party vendor service known as Persona, known for storing sensitive data such as this, and more so for the data breaches it frequently suffered. Very recently, it was found that frontend components tied to Persona were accessible on the open web, highly exposed to simple website searches. This only further sowed distrust in Discord and Persona, and while Discord has been reported to be cutting ties with Persona, there is yet to be any news about the status of the age verification process.
In the times we live in, especially with corporations, hackers, and even the government doing all they can to access our data, AI age verification is a dangerous entity to trust. While the idea may be to “protect children,” that responsibility should fall to parents granting their children access to the internet. The true intention seems to be an easier means of data farming and profiling, keeping tabs on the people and building pictures of identities that can be fed to unintended recipients or even fed to other AI systems. The Internet was already a dangerous place before, and the rise of AI is only making said danger much more apparent, and even lethal.
If there’s any takeaway I’d like you to gain from this, dear reader, it’s to keep your sensitive information close, and your private things private. Heed my mother’s advice, and don’t go putting all your business out there.
