Since final 12 months, YouTube has been cracking down on non-age-verified accounts. Though the aim is to guard the platform’s youngest viewers, the age-prediction system YouTube deployed has wrongly ensnared numerous accounts owned by adults. For those who’re tagged by the system, you’ll be able to restore full entry to your account, however provided that you present proof of your age first. Now OpenAI is following YouTube’s lead and rolling its personal age-prediction system for ChatGPT accounts.
First introduced again in September 2025, OpenAI says it’s now rolling out its age prediction system for ChatGPT client accounts. Just like the YouTube instrument, the system will guess the age of the person and place them in one among two classes: over 18 or below 18. In accordance with the agency, your age will probably be decided by a mixture of a number of elements, comparable to:
- How lengthy the account has existed
- Typical instances of day when somebody is lively
- Utilization patterns over time
- A person’s acknowledged age
If the system identifies your account as belonging to somebody below the age of 18, “extra protections” will probably be positioned on the account. These protections will scale back publicity to sure varieties of content material, like graphic and violent pictures, dangerous viral challenges, sexual position play, depictions of self-harm, and extra. The corporate notes that oldsters will be capable of customise their little one’s expertise by way of the parental controls, like setting “Quiet hours.”
In fact, this technique will make errors, similar to YouTube’s instrument does. In a state of affairs the place the system can’t inform the age of the person, OpenAI says it should default to the under-18 class. For those who’re incorrectly positioned into the under-18 class, you’ll should take a selfie and submit it to Persona, a safe identity-verification service, to regain full entry. You’ll be capable of test if any restrictions had been positioned in your account by going to Settings > Account.
