MAP Forum

OpenAI has made age-prediction technology a part of users accounts in ChatGPT.

In a blog post, the company said that for users under the age of 18 who do not disclose their age to ChatGPT, the system will estimate their age using this technology.

The software will assess a person’s behavior and other signals such as how long the account has existed, when the user is active and other factors to make an age estimate.

If the software mistakenly identifies you as underage, you will be able to verify your age through an identity verification service. This will require a live selfie and an identity card.

Gillenwater gives the example of Jordan DeMay — a 17-year-old high school student from Michigan, who tragically died by suicide in 2022 after falling victim to a sextortion scam.

“Good kid, good family, good school records, had a girlfriend,” he says.

Then one day, an attractive girl messaged him on social media and struck up a flirtatious conversation that culminated in her sending nude photos. Jordan was asked to return the favor, and when he did, it was revealed that the images of the girl were stolen or fake and that she was actually a Nigerian gang. The two brothers behind the operation — Samuel and Samson Ogoshi — threatened to blackmail DeMay by sending his explicit photos to his family, friends, and school contacts if he didn’t wire them money, spurring DeMay to take his own life.

This entire sextortion scam — from initial contact to DeMay’s suicide — occurred in less than six hours.

Cosmas Zavazava, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) – one of the key agencies that drafted the statement, which includes guidelines and recommendations – catalogues a dizzying array of ways that children are targeted.

This extends from grooming to deepfakes, the embedding of harmful features, cyberbullying and inappropriate content: “We saw that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many children, particularly girls and young women, were abused online and, in many cases, that translated to physical harm,” he says.