A hot potato: Would you be willing to submit a selfie to a porn site so it can use AI to confirm you really are over 18? The process is one of the suggestions put forward by the UK to ensure the recently passed Online Safety Act rules are adhered to by website owners.
The United Kingdom has long been trying to introduce age verification laws for pornography sites. A system using passports, credit cards, and other means was supposed to come into effect in April 2019, but it was scrapped over privacy and technical issues just weeks before being implemented.
Following the recent passing of the controversial Online Safety Act, which must, among many other things, ensure that children are not normally able to encounter pornography on sites or apps, telecoms regulator Ofcom has published new plans for how these services can confirm that a person is of legal age to view the content.
Ofcom lists six suggested methods for verifying users' ages. These include the previous method of inputting credit card details, which involves a payment processor sending a request to check the card is valid to the issuing bank, thereby confirming the person is 18 or over.
The other methods are confirming a person's age with their mobile operator, using a digital identity wallet, giving consent to a bank to confirm a person is over 18, and photo matching, in which someone uploads a photo-ID document, such as a driving license or passport, which is then compared to an image of the user.
The final suggested method is using AI to estimate a person's age based on a selfie. This same method is used by Instagram and Facebook Dating through a third-party company called Yoti, which uses machine learning trained on "hundreds of thousands" of pictures to estimate the person's age. It is also utilized by PornHub for its Model Program that lets users upload their own videos to the site. There are obviously a lot of privacy concerns with the method, but Yoti says that once it verifies the information, the data is encrypted – even the company itself cannot see it.
Some methods of verification will not be accepted by Ofcom, including the usual self-declaration of age, online payment methods that don't require a person to be 18, and any general terms, disclaimers, or warnings.
Ofcom writes that the latest research shows the average age at which children first see online pornography is 13, nearly a quarter come across it by age 11, and one in ten as young as 9. Additionally, nearly 8 in 10 youngsters have encountered violent pornography depicting coercive, degrading, or pain-inducing sex acts before turning 18.
Porn sites will be able to choose from one of Ofcom's suggestions or use their own "highly effective" age verification method.
There are still plenty of questions about the Online Safety Act, including its potential threat to global encryption and the use of VPNs to circumvent many of the rules. One also has to wonder how many people will be willing to hand over personal details and photos of themselves in order to view porn, no matter how many privacy promises are made.