Instagram’s AI Age Check Goes Global

Instagram does not allow children below the age of 13 to use it. Those aged between 13 and 17 are permitted but with restrictions. The problem it faces, however, is that teenagers don’t like these restrictions and so lie about their age to get full access. The answer that Meta, the company that owns Instagram, has come up is to use artificial intelligence to spot those who do it. It was still limited to around 30 countries, including the UK and those of the European Union. Meta has now announced that the feature is going to be rolled out worldwide.

While it has not been made public how the AI figures out who the teenagers are, it is thought to be by going through content and looking for markers like school grades, birthday celebrations or how someone looks. It moves suspected users into a teen account, where daily hours of use and what they can access are limited. Meta is primarily driven to do it because of court cases. One of these which ended in a $18-billion settlement had to be accompanied by a promise of doing more to identify teenagers and children under 13. The measure, however, also raises concerns about privacy since the AI tool would have to look into any and all accounts to come to a conclusion about age.

FABLE UPGRADE

Anthropic released its latest frontier models, Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2. Mythos is limited to cybersecurity and life sciences organisations that have been vetted. Fable is the safeguarded version of the same model for general users. Normally, Fable is only available in top tier subscription plans or with credit usage. But an introductory offer allows all paid subscribers different degrees of access for a week.

GOOGLE’S NEW CHIPS

Google steadily advanced its TPU line-up, its alternative to GPUs that power AI, with two new variants, taking it to a total of four announced this year. Each specialises in different aspects of AI development. TPU 8t and 8i, which came earlier this year, were for training and reasoning. The two new ones, TPU 8tx and 8i Max, are tailored for confidential computing and massive contexts, respectively.

ROBOT VERSUS COLD

Humanoid robots have run long races and broken human records but one of them decided to try it in the freezing cold. Qestr was the only machine in a field of 25 runners in the Antarctic Ice Ultra event on November 8. Alas, it could only go for 3km before its battery ran out even though it was wearing a thermal jacket. The temperature, which was as low as minus 24 degrees Celsius, was too much for it.