FTC is seeking public comments on an ESRB proposal to use facial recognition for COPPA consent when children play games.

This seems... wild.

Although, it's important to keep in mind that this is in the context of COPPA consent, which already required photo ID by the parent for children under the age of 13.

Still, I cannot see this truly going well. It's smarter than just a picture, sure. But it's done by a VC-funded private company and by Epic. I'd give it about 12 minutes until archives of thousands of uploaded mini-videos for verification appear on the net, probably public because someone forgot to properly patch the web server.

However to not go all crazy on it: This also opens up the can of "How do we do smarter online age verification, anyways?". AI-based facial recognition isn't a sensible one if you ask me, but we need a better way as other countries have already ruled that simply putting in your age or clicking an "i'm 18+"-button is not legally binding and hence cannot be used as verifiable age verification.