The ESRB have proposed to introduce a new concept which will allow parents greater control over kids playing video games. This would see a facial ‘age estimation’ used to determine the age of the player.
The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) is set up to assign age and content ratings for video games in the US and Canada. And the new proposal for implementing Facial Recognition Technology was brought up by the FTC recently, when they were put up for public opinion.
The implementation of this doesn’t appear to be simply for mature content games but for all video games. The Chinese company Tencent have also recently launched a program which is very similar, however their program uses facial recognition to allow kids to have more game time. Whereas the ESRB intend to use their program for a series of ‘parental locks’ rather than any sort of restriction.
How the ESRB plan to use this technology
Could the use of of facial recognition technology be seen as controversial?The system would see parents having to upload a selfie to a server, where it would then go through the necessary algorithm. If after checking, it is determined that the image of the person uploaded is of age, then they will be able to unlock the games for access to play. However, parents who are happy to have their kids playing more mature games could also do this to allow their kids to play games such as Grand Theft Auto.
It should be noted that that it isn’t only ESRB who are getting involved with this use of technology. Companies such as Yoti and the Epic-Games owned, Super Awesome, have joined together to request that the FTC approve the usage of this Tech. Super Awesome have come out to say that they want to build ‘a safer internet for the next generation’.
A representative for Epic said that the tech differs to that of facial recognition, stating that;
“The system takes a facial image, converts it into numbers, and compares those numbers to patterns in its training dataset that are associated with known ages.”
All three companies who are involved have made claim that they would delete images of their servers immediately after. However it should be noted that other companies have been caught out by these claims. Snapchat were one such company who were found out for storing information on their servers.
When asked about this proposal, a spokesperson for ESRB had the following to say;
“To be perfectly clear: Any images and data used for this process are never stored, used for AI training, used for marketing, or shared with anyone; the only piece of information that is communicated to the company requesting VPC is a “Yes” or “No” determination as to whether the person is over the age of 25.”
What’s your thoughts on ESRB using facial recognition technology to determine a player’s age? Are you a parent and think this would be beneficial for monitoring what your kids are playing online? Get in touch, drop us a comment and let us know your thoughts.
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