Yoti Takes Steps to Improve Age Estimation Technology

Yoti is working to improve the accuracy of its age estimation technology for children under the age of 13. As it stands, the platform is accurate to within 1.5 years for people between the ages of 13 and 25.

The company described its progress at a recent stakeholder roundtable. This was the third such roundtable that Yoti has hosted in the past two years, and brought together more than 50 guests from all over the world.

At the roundtable, Yoti revealed that it is now working on two campaigns that are designed to extend the age range of its technology. Those campaigns are being carried out in collaboration with British Esports and GoBubble, the latter of which operates the GoBubbleWrap content moderation platform for children. GoBubbleWrap is a Software-as-a-Service solution.

Both campaigns kicked off on February 9 as part of Safer Internet Day, and are part of the UK’s ICO Sandbox program. The first is an educational campaign and video competition, and was set up to teach young people how age estimation technology works, as well as the ethical considerations that are involved. To that end, Yoti has created a series of videos and interactive materials to demonstrate how certain technologies work in practice.

The #Share2Protect campaign, on the other hand, is an opt-in program that asks parents to submit photos of their children for use in a dataset that will be used to refine Yoti’s age estimation technology. Yoti believes that content platforms will be able to use the improved system to stop minors from viewing age-restricted materials, and to prevent grooming on their sites. The company also wants to ensure that it has the full consent of the people in its database.

“Keeping children safer online is a collective priority for all of us,” said Lorin LaFave of the Founder Breck Foundation. “By parents safely sharing their children’s photos today for Yoti to create better age verification techniques, children will have a safer and healthier online future.”

In July, Yoti joined the Point de Contact association to help fight child abuse and stop the spread of illegal content online. The company’s technology has previously been used to verify the ages of those using Yubo’s youth-oriented social media platform.

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March 29, 2021 – by Eric Weiss