Meta Platforms Inc., under fire from parents and lawmakers over its impact on teens’ mental health, plans to use artificial intelligence to identify young users on Instagram who are lying about their age and automatically switch them into more restrictive privacy settings.
With a proprietary software tool it calls an “adult classifier,” Meta will categorize users into two age brackets — older or younger than 18 — based on the person’s own account data, according to Allison Hartnett, Meta’s director of product management for youth and social impact. The software can sift through a user’s profile, see their follower list and what content they interact with, and will even scan unsuspecting “happy birthday” posts made by friends to predict a user’s age.
