Roblox’s new era verification feature uses AI to scan teenagers’ video selfies

In the briefing, Kaufman called Roblox “one of the safest places online, keeping people together to spend time with friends and family.”

Kirra Pendergast, founder and CEO of Safe Social Security, is largely opt-in, and so “there is a responsibility to identify and manage risks for minors, which contradicts everything we have to do with beauty dynamics.” For example, features like machine learning age estimation tools may mistakenly categorize users as younger users; face-to-face code scanning says, “Suppose face-to-face QR code scanning is safe in nature.”

“Preats often use real-world beauty strategies,” Pendergast said. “QR scans cannot verify trustworthy relationships. Predators can build trust online and then manipulate children to gradually scan QR codes to verify “trusted connections” in Roblox’s system. True protection requires co-verification of any connection for the guardian of any connection, not the permissions for the child to initiate.”

Additionally, trusted connections are only suitable for chats, which makes “large surface areas exposed, at best, make it a vulnerable barrier,” Pendergast said.

Asked about how face-to-face QR codes can protect minors from the scope of realistic beauty strategies, Kaufman echoed the news briefing, saying there was no “silver bullet”. Instead, it is a system where many systems work together, he said. “These systems start with our policies, our community standards,” Kaufman said. “It’s our products that automatically monitor things, it’s our partnership, it’s people behind the scenes. So we have a set of things that keep people safe. It’s not just QR codes, or not just age estimates, but all of these things that show up in concert.”

Kaufman said Roblox does not allow children aged 13 to 17 to communicate unfiltered without trusted contacts compared to other platforms. “We think we do set standards for the world to communicate safely and openly to a teenage audience.”

According to Roblox’s briefing, these updates are part of a typical Roblox development process and are not “affected by any particular event” or feedback. “It’s not a reaction to something,” Kaufman said. “It’s part of our long-term plan to make roblox as safe as possible.”

Kaufman also told Wired that the review of the game and the review of discussions has not had a huge impact on the company’s plans. “What we are doing this announcement is also trying to set the standard for what we think is suitable for children,” he said.

Looking at technologies like generative AI, he said, “The technology may have changed, but the principles are still the same. We also see AI as a real opportunity to be able to handle certain things securely on a large scale when considering moderation. AI is at the core.”

Roblox believes it is important for parents and guardians to “build conversations” with their children about online safety, he said in the briefing. “It’s a discussion about their time online, who are friends and what they are doing,” Kaufman said. “Discussion is probably the most important thing to keep people safe and we are investing in tools to achieve that.” He added that Roblox knows that families have different expectations for proper online behavior. “If parents make decisions about decisions that are right for their children, it may not match the decisions we may make, or I may make them for my own family,” he said. “But that’s OK, we respect that difference.”