Instagram Social Media
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. It allows users to share pictures and videos with their friends and followers and has become a platform for brands and businesses to connect with customers and build brand awareness. The Instagram platform has also become a source of employment for many AI researchers. Today, Instagram users upload billions of images and videos every day, providing a valuable training dataset for AI researchers.
Testing New ways to Verify Age
Instagram is testing new ways to verify users’ ages, including artificial intelligence, to help users better protect their accounts. The automated technology will use facial recognition to help determine whether a user is an adult or a minor, and will prompt users to verify their ages if the technology flags them as being underage. The test lets people prove their age by either providing their date of birth in the first place or providing a response, like a date that is older than their actual age. The goal is not to make Instagram even more draconian about its age-verification policies the test is being widely viewed.
Instagram Face Recognition
Yoti is a well-known player in the online age and identity verification, and its technology has been approved by the UK government and German digital regulators. Use various facial expressions to estimate the age of the target. (Although the company itself says it doesn’t know exactly what those marks are. Wrinkles? Unspeakable sadness? It’s all there.)
You can estimate Yoti’s age yourself on YOTI – I found much younger (by four) when I took my glasses off, so my mileage may vary. It is generally less accurate (plus or minus 3.97 years) when used on Dark Skin color of women and more accurate (2.38 years) on light-skinned men.
Part of the AI involves creating a selfie video, which Meta’s own Instagram then shares with a company called Yoti (yoti doesn’t provide any other information, just an image, it says). “Yoti technology estimates your age based on your facial features and our estimates. Meta and Yoti then delete the image. Technology does not recognize your identity, only your age,” Instagram wrote in a blog post.
The Yoti system is already used by the UK and German governments for deep learning age determination and has been trained on “hundreds of thousands” of images, Yoti co-founder Robin Tombs told Wired last year. However, like other neural networks, it works like a black box, so even the company doesn’t know exactly what facial features it uses.
Instagram age limit
The minimum age for new Instagram users is 13, but this rule has been largely or completely ignored by the company over the years. In fact, the company only made age verification a priority in 2019; but critics never saw his efforts as enough. Does that change now?
Customers scan their faces to estimate their age in seconds. Customers do not need to present any ID and can rest assured that their scanned documents will be deleted immediately and will not be saved or viewed by anyone.
Age estimation is based on a computer technology known as a “neural network” which was developed to estimate a person’s age using “machine learning techniques”.
This is a complicated problem that tech companies say won’t be easy to solve, but it can be solved with broader technology changes birthdates being tied to a person’s cell phone. Meta said it will test new verification tools for anyone trying to go from under 18 to over 18, including asking for selfie videos or asking friends to verify their age.
Conclusion:
Facial recognition technology utilizes algorithms to identify and verify individuals based on their unique facial features. It analyzes facial characteristics such as the distance between the eyes, nose, and mouth, as well as the shape of facial structures.
- Enhanced security: Facial recognition could be used as an additional layer of security to protect user accounts. Users could opt for facial recognition as a method of authentication instead of traditional passwords.
- Personalized experiences: Instagram could utilize facial recognition to offer personalized content recommendations based on users’ facial expressions or emotions. For example, the platform might suggest filters or stickers based on the user’s current mood.
- Accessibility features: Facial recognition could enable Instagram to provide accessibility features for users with visual impairments. The platform could describe images and videos to these users based on the detected facial features.
It’s important to note that while facial recognition technology offers potential benefits, it also raises concerns regarding privacy and data security. Instagram would need to address these concerns and implement robust safeguards to protect user privacy and prevent any potential misuse of the technology.
