Meta expands Instagram AI age checks worldwide

Meta is expanding Instagram’s AI age-estimation system worldwide to identify accounts it suspects belong to teenagers aged 13 to 17, including accounts registered with an adult birth date, and place them in Teen Account protections. The company said the global rollout is expected to bring millions more teens under those settings, but did not provide an independent measure of the system’s accuracy or the number of accounts it will affect.

Meta says its technology analyzes profile and activity signals to estimate a user’s age. It looks for contextual clues in posts, comments, bios and captions, and also examines visual cues in photos and videos. If Instagram suspects an account belongs to a teenager, it can apply Teen Account settings regardless of the birth date listed on the profile.

Those settings limit who can contact teens and the content they see, and include tools related to time management. Users younger than 16 need parental permission to loosen certain settings, according to Meta. The company says it is also working to identify children under 13 who may be using its apps, though the announcement’s Instagram expansion focuses on accounts believed to belong to 13- to...