Inside AI’s role to help keep children safe from online pornography

Artificial intelligence could play a role in anonymous age verification checks on pornographic and social media sites being ­investigated by the federal ­government.

How the age verification system works when attempting to access adult content online.

Artificial intelligence could play a role in anonymous age verification checks on pornographic and social media sites being ­investigated by the federal ­government.

The exposure of children and teenagers to online violence against women and violent sexual practices is a key concern, with the government saying it will announce funding for an age verification system for accessing adult content in the May budget.

Prospective solutions are now coming thick and fast but the government is yet to pick one.

A spokesman for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said implementation was “still in concept” stage, despite years of investigations.

Australian technology inventor Ric Richardson said he had tested a two-step anonymous biometric-based age verification system that used AI to assess the approximate age of someone wanting to access an adult content site.

His version didn’t share personal information with the site other than whether the user passed verification. He said AI could comfortably assess whether a person was roughly over 25 using a mobile device camera or webcam. “The accuracy from 25 up seems to become higher because of the way AI discerns a person’s age from their face,” he said.

Anyone younger would submit verifiable photo ID, but again no personal details were kept or passed on.

Mr Richardson said he had tested his system for three weeks and verification took just seconds.

Research published by Indiana University in the US last month offered a poignant example of how young people are influenced by violent pornographic sites promoting practices such as choking and asphyxiation, with a concern that much of it in the community is not consensual.

The survey found that 40 per cent of young women reported being choked during sex for the first time when they were between 12 and 17 years old.

Two-thirds of 5000 students interviewed at university age had experienced being choked by their partner while having sex.

Australian tech inventor Rich Richardson says he has tested his system for three weeks and age verification takes just seconds.

Blocking young people from age-restricted content is often regarded as in line with movie and TV classifications. But achieving it has been technically difficult.

In 2019, a House of Representatives inquiry examining age verification listed commercial age-and-identity-verification providers, government-issued identity documents, age estimation and biometric verification as options.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner produced a roadmap for age verification last year which the government didn’t take up, but times have changed.

Outside government, Apple’s parental controls, Google’s Family Link and third party apps have informally offered ways for parents to restrict children’s access to adult content, but there are questions about their effectiveness, especially given the capacity of tech-savvy children to outsmart their parents.

Mr Richardson is a long-time tech inventor, who famously won a $530m-plus settlement in a case against Microsoft, which was accused of stealing his patented encryption technology in the 1990s.

His anonymous biometric-based age verification system is one of the options being considered around the world. He has patented his system, but said Open AI’s GPT models offered pretty accurate anonymous age verification anyway.

Legislation and regulation would be needed to ensure adult content and social media sites complied with age verification ­requirements.

Mr Richardson said Australia’s privacy commissioner could be tasked with safeguarding user privacy during verification.

Adult content sites would need to add just four lines of code to comply with his age verification system, he said. “I have a very strong sense of morality about this. But at the same time, I fully understand there’s lots of people in Australia who don’t think about things the same as me, and our system of law and our society allows for that diversity,” he said.

Age verification for accessing adult content has taken off overseas, with Associated Press reporting that eight US states have introduced it since 2020 with another 20 lining up now. These jurisdictions will offer a testing ground for the world to judge whether it makes a difference.