YouTube announces automatic AI age verification for US amidst fears of censorship in wake of UK's Online Safety Act
YouTube has announced that it will test drive a new automatic age verification system for US users in the coming weeks. The system will try to figure out the age group of a viewer and categorize it as under or over 18. YouTube will then use this information to deliver age-appropriate content and more.
YouTube claims that the system will use machine learning to analyze factors such as the viewer’s search behavior, the type of content they watch, and the age of the account to determine whether the viewer is under 18 or an adult. Interestingly, the system will disregard the age of the viewer mentioned on their YouTube account when determining the age group of the viewer.
To that end, if this automatic system incorrectly flags an adult viewer as a teen, the user will have the option to verify their age using a government-issued ID or credit card. For teens, once the system determines that they are under 18, YouTube will automatically disable personalized ads and restrict inappropriate content.
Moreover, YouTube also explains that the system will tune recommendations for teens. For instance, the system can limit “repetitive views of some kinds of content”. This is where YouTube’s upcoming automatic age verification system starts to raise some eyebrows.
While this may have been decided to limit teens’ exposure to potentially harmful content, the system appears to have immense potential for censorship and misuse. The most obvious question here: If a video is appropriate to watch for a teen, what gives YouTube the right to limit repetitive views of the video? Moreover, the system could also be used to artificially push or suppress a certain point of view by limiting repeat or outright access to videos.
There is also the issue of giving YouTube access to your government ID or credit card information. Google is not immune to massive data breaches. Just in June 2025 alone, Google was part of a data breach that exposed billions of passwords. So, if a user has a government ID/credit card tied to their Google account for the purpose of age verification, that data is at risk of getting stolen. This is also one of the biggest critiques of the UK’s Online Safety Act, which has recently gone into effect.
The Online Safety Act (OSA), which a UK politician Zia Yusuf has claimed “plunges this country into a borderline dystopian state”, mandates online platforms like X implement comprehensive age verification systems to keep underage viewers safe from potentially harmful content. OSA’s mandated age verification will lead to services demanding to see government-issued IDs to determine the correct age of a user. Per widespread concerns, this not only puts sensitive user data at significant risk but could also be considered a violation of freedom of expression.
We’ll have to wait and see how YouTube’s testing of the automatic age verification system goes and what form the final system takes when it rolls out widely.
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