Remember a couple years ago, when Chinese gaming giant Tencent began using facial recognition to keep the kids from playing too many videogames? It turns out that the Entertainment Software Rating Board, North America's videogame rating agency, is looking to do something quite similar.
The ESRB, along with digital identity company Yoti and Epic Games-owned "youth digital media" company SuperAwesome, have filed a proposal with the FTC seeking approval for a new "verifiable parental consent mechanism" called Privacy-Protective Facial Age Estimation. Simply put, the parent takes a selfie, assisted by an "auto face capture module," which is then analyzed by the system to ensure it's the face of an adult, who can then grant whatever permissions are required. The entire process of verification takes less than a second "on average," and images are permanently deleted after the verification is complete.
