The US agency ESRB, which issues age ratings to video games, has filed an application with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It wants the agency to approve a new age assessment method.
According to the US law on the protection of personal data of children under 13, online services, including games, must request parental consent to collect information about young users. To make sure that the consent was given by an adult, the ESRB suggests using a tool that checks the age of the face image. The application for the FTC claims that it does not require you to specify your name, date of birth and other personal data, which means it is safer than other methods of age assessment. The tool was developed by the company Yoti.
Note: we are not talking about facial recognition technology, but about the assessment of age by face. What is the difference between these methods?
The facial recognition technology reads the unique geometry of the face (the interpupillary distance, the shape of the chin, cheekbones and other features) and searches for matches in a pre-prepared database.
The technology of age assessment by face converts pixels in the image into numbers and compares them with templates corresponding to different ages from the learning database. Its task is not to identify a person, but only to determine how old he is.
It is reported that the Yoti tool will only work with people aged 25 and older.