Using AI for Good on Yubo

Today, we are happy to announce an innovative partnership with digital identity company Yoti that will see Yoti’s age estimation technology YAS  (Yoti Age Scan) help protect Yubo’s community of users.

Yoti will verify the age of individuals and flag accounts where the person appears to have misstated their age; an important step in safeguarding young people on social networks. Owners of flagged accounts will be given the option to then use the free Yoti app to verify their date of birth.

Using a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) called neural network learning, YAS is a secure, anonymous age-checking service that accurately estimates a person’s age by comparing an individual’s face to many thousands of other age-verified faces. After the age is estimated, the image is deleted.

It can be used when providing age-restricted goods and services, both online and in person. Yubo is the first social media site to use YAS to help ensure individuals can only access age-appropriate content on Yubo. Since adopting the technology in December 2018, Yubo has conducted over 22 million age checks using YAS that would have been prohibitively expensive to do manually each day.

Marc-Antoine Durand, COO at Yubo, commented, “We’ve selected Yoti’s age estimation technology, YAS, to give us a simple, private and secure way to make the app safe for our users; a vital step to help safeguard young people online. We are excited to develop a partnership with Yoti and use their identity verification technology to further enhance the safety of our platform for our users.”

Robin Tombs, CEO and Co-Founder of Yoti explained, “Our facial recognition applications are designed to make life simpler and safer for everyone. As a parent with young children, I’m delighted that Yubo has chosen to use YAS to help with this vital step to protect young people online. YAS can estimate someone’s age with a high degree of accuracy, and Yoti gives people the chance to verify their age in a private and secure way. Our work with Yubo shows how Yoti’s technology can help make the internet a safer place for young people.”

Annie Mullins OBE, Safety Expert and Yubo advisor, said, “This is an exciting and innovative step for safeguarding young people online, which sets an example to other platforms and highlights Yubo’s commitment and leadership to proactive safety measures and protecting young users.”

John Carr, Online Child Safety Consultant, commented, “Regulators should take note of this new approach. Yubo is now showing how AI can be used to review if a person is in the right age band. For game sites and social media companies, there is now a new way to safeguard minors. This is a brilliant example of technology being used to help improve online safety, one that is on a fast track towards the mainstream.”

YAS has been designed with data privacy and security as primary considerations. YAS is a private and anonymous solution. There is no need for individuals to register in advance or provide any documents as evidence of their identity. YAS simply estimates their age. The image is instantly destroyed as soon as the age has been estimated.

As part of their ongoing safety strategy, Yubo plan to use the Yoti app to let flagged users share their verified date of birth. Individuals will also be able to verify their name so that Yubo can highlight verified users to others.

For more information about Yoti go to www.yoti.com or read the YAS white paper.