Meta Details: “Adult Classifier” tool for spotting teens lying about their age on Instagram

Meta posted more information on Instagram about how it is using AI to catch teens who lie about their age. As first reported by BloombergEarly next year, the company will launch Adult Classifier, a tool it says will identify users under 18 and automatically apply Instagram's more restrictive privacy settings to them.

According to Allison Hartnett, head of product management for youth and social impact at Meta, the software will look at indicators such as the accounts a user follows and the content they regularly interact with. If the tool suspects someone is under 18, it will move them to a teen account, regardless of what age they list on their profile.

Meta did not immediately respond to Engadget's request for comment.

When Meta began rolling out youth accounts in September, Meta initially announced that it would use AI to identify young users who had provided information about their age. For these accounts, the company automatically applies Instagram's strictest privacy settings to children under 16. For example, the accounts are automatically set to private and they cannot send messages to strangers. Under pressure from lawmakers and parents, Meta had already applied many of these restrictions to underage users before introducing teen accounts, but with the official launch of the feature, the company has ensured that teens cannot change these settings without the consent of a child parent.

On Monday, the company did not disclose how exactly the adult classification tool determines a person's age. Meta told Bloomberg People wrongly identified by the software could ultimately have the opportunity to appeal, although the social media giant is still working on what that process will look like.

The company requires teens who attempt to manually change the age listed on their account to prove their identity. Users have the option to either upload an official government-issued ID or share a video selfie with Yoti. Meta previously worked with Yoti to enable age verification on Facebook Dating. The company's machine learning algorithm estimates a person's age based on their facial features. As soon as Yoti tells Meta his estimate, they both delete the video.

The adult classification software is part of Meta's broader effort to make it harder for people to lie about their age on Instagram. Additionally, the company plans to report teens who attempt to create a new account using an email address that is already linked to an existing account and a different birth date. There are also plans to use device IDs to get a better picture of who is creating a new profile.

Meta, along with Google and TikTok owner ByteDance, recently failed to convince a U.S. federal judge to dismiss a series of lawsuits alleging the companies failed to adequately protect their young users from the harmful and addictive effects of the Use of social media protected.