Rachel Mealey: It's now just two months until the ban on Australian teens under 16 using social media comes into place and face scanning tools are one of several linchpin technologies social media companies will depend on to kick children off their platforms. But researchers in Melbourne have found those facial scanning tools can be tricked when users wear masks or other party costumes. Our national technology reporter, Ange Lavoipierre, joined me earlier. And what are some of the tactics researchers have been trying and how well do they work to trick age checks?
Ange Lavoipierre: Well, these are only preliminary findings, right? They've emerged from the early stages of this study being run by the University of Melbourne, along with Princeton, to put these three top performing facial age estimation systems through their paces. Of course, these are systems that use AI to guess your age by looking at your face. And they're systems that are seen as fairly likely to feature in Australia's teen social media ban. So study participants have been trying out a lot of different costumes, a lot of pretty interesting costumes, a so-called wrinkly old man mask from a party supplier website. There's a Guy Fawkes mask in there, even the kind of silly nose, glasses, moustache combo. And those tricks do seem to work, not every single time and not reliably, but researchers, participants could get those packs, those workarounds going after a couple of tries, after multiple tries, they were able to bypass those age checks. I spoke to Professor Shaanan Cohney from the University of Melbourne about what it is they've learned so far.
Shaanan Cohney: And we found that every age assurance vendor that we tested had one bypass that was easily accomplished with things that you could buy at your local $2 shop. So whether that's a mask, whether that's pointing the camera at a video game, whether that is making a silly expression, they were all very accessible things.
Rachel Mealey: And what do the companies that make these age assurance systems have to say? Were they surprised at some of the results?
Ange Lavoipierre: As you can imagine, they are keen to put this in perspective because, you know, they've never said, and the industry associations never said that these systems are perfect. You know, also the more tries that you get at beating a system, which is the point of testing these things, obviously the chances of success go up. If the systems are too tight, you know, you also can end up excluding people who are trying in poor lighting or have facial difference or who just took a blurry picture. So you have to give a few tries both in testing and in the wild. I spoke to the executive director of the global industry body, which is called the Age Verification Providers Association, Iain Corby, and he says the leading systems are prepared for this kind of thing. They're always evolving. And basically tricks like this often get blown out of proportion.
Iain Corby: I would say that all of them have some degree of protection in place. Some of them might spot 97 per cent of the attacks, others might spot 98 per cent of the attacks. None of them will spot them all. The age verification scheme has a lab where it tests for these things and they've got all crazy masks and they do tests for all that stuff.
Rachel Mealey: Iain Corby from the Age Verification Providers Association and before him, our technology reporter, Ange Lavoipierre.