Welcome to the TechMeme Right Home for Wednesday, July 30th, 2025. I'm Brian McCalla today.

Age verification for web users is sweeping the globe. ChatGPT debuts a study mode for students.

What exactly is Zuckerberg trying to achieve by hiring everyone in AI, maybe cohere is the real dark horse in the

AI model race, and what if the real money in AI video is in training robots? Here's what you

miss today in the world of tech. YouTube is rolling out age estimation technology in the U.S. to identify teen users and serve more age-appropriate content, regardless of the birthday those users might have given at sign-up. Quoting TechCrunch,

when YouTube identifies a user as a teen, it introduces new protections and experiences, which include disabling

personalized advertising, safeguards that limit repetitive viewing of certain types of content,

and enabling digital well-being tools such as screen time and bedtime reminders among

others. These protections already exist on YouTube, but have only been applied to those

who's verified themselves as teens, not those who may have

withheld their real age. For instance, in 2023, YouTube began limiting repeated viewing of videos

that could trigger body image issues or those that display social aggression. The company

has also been developing digital well-being tools since 2018. If the new system incorrectly identifies a user

as under 18 when they're not, YouTube says the user will be given the opportunity to verify

their age with a credit card, government ID, or selfie. Only users who have been directly verified

through this method or whose age has been inferred to be over 18 will will be able to view the age-restricted content

on the platform.

The machine learning-powered technology will begin to roll out over the next few weeks to

a small set of U.S. users and will then be monitored before rolling out more widely,

the company says.

The plans to introduce age inference technology were announced in February as part of YouTube's

2025 roadmap.

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