Google announced on Wednesday that it will begin using artificial intelligence to assess if customers are old enough to use its goods.
TakeAway Points:
- Google says it will start experimenting with using AI to better enforce its product’s age limitations.
- Google uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to determine if a user is over or under the age of 18.
- The decision follows Google’s ambition to deploy AI for additional tasks and as it faces pressure from lawmakers for child safety.
- Google’s calendar product no longer displays some observances that were shown in previous years.
AI to determine users’ ages
Google announced the new technique for determining users’ ages as part of a blog focused on “New digital protections for kids, teens and parents.” The automation will be used across Google products, including YouTube, a spokesperson confirmed. Google has billions of users across its properties and users designated as under the age of 18 have restrictions to some Google services.
“This year we’ll begin testing a machine learning-based age estimation model in the U.S.,” wrote Jenn Fitzpatrick, SVP of Google’s “Core” Technology team, in the blog post. The Core unit is responsible for building the technical foundation behind the company’s flagship products and for protecting users’ online safety.
“This model helps us estimate whether a user is over or under 18 so that we can apply protections to help provide more age-appropriate experiences,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
The latest AI move also comes as lawmakers pressure online platforms to create more provisions around child safety. The company said it will bring its AI-based age estimations to more countries over time. Meta rolled out similar features that use AI to determine that someone may be lying about their age in September.
Google and others within the tech industry have been ramping their reliance on AI for various tasks and products. Using AI for age-related content represents the latest AI front for Google.
The new initiative by Google’s “Core” team comes despite the company reorganization that unit last year, laying off hundreds of employees and moving some roles to India and Mexico, CNBC reported at the time.
Google Calendar no longer includes start of Black History Month or Pride Month
Google’s popular online and mobile calendars no longer include reference to the first day of Black History Month or Women’s History Month, among other holidays and events.
The company’s calendar previously had those days marked at the start of February and March, respectively, but they don’t appear for 2025.
The Verge first reported on the removals from Google Calendar late last week, which followed comments from users.
A Google spokesperson said the changes took place in the middle of last year.
“Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” the spokesperson added.
Google has made numerous changes lately that align with an altered political environment in the U.S. The company recently began scrapping its diversity hiring goals, becoming the latest tech giant to change its approach to hiring and promotions following the election of President Donald Trump. One of Trump’s first acts as president after taking office in January was to sign an executive order ending the government’s DEI programs and putting federal officials overseeing those initiatives on leave.
In late January, the company said it would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” in Google Maps after the Trump administration updates its “official government sources.” Google also said it would follow Trump and start using the name “Mount McKinley” for the mountain in Alaska currently called Denali.
On Google Calendar, the company has removed other events as well. It previously had Nov. 1 as the first day of Indigenous Peoples Month and June 1 as the start of LGBTQ+ Pride month.
The company spokesperson said that in mid-2024, the company “returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.” The timeanddate.com website says its company has 40 employees and is based in Norway.
Google Calendar users noticed the changes and left comments on the user support web pages and on social media. The user support site previously received comments from people upset about the company adding such observances.
