Facial age estimation
Under the hood of facial age estimation
Since the UK Online Safety Act came into force on Friday 25th July, there has been a lot of discussion about how effective age checks are. Facial age estimation has been approved by Ofcom as a high assurance method for online age checks. It’s a quick, private and effective way to confirm if someone is above or below an age threshold. Each facial age estimation is quick and simple – taking around one second. This has sparked conversation when talking to businesses, press, regulators and governments – one of the most striking comments we’ve heard when showing them the
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Jul 03, 2025
How accurate can facial age estimation get?
Facial age estimation using machine learning has advanced significantly in recent years. But, a common and fair question still arises: How accurate can it really be? Can a system look at your face and accurately guess your age, especially when humans often get it wrong? The short answer is that it’s very accurate – but not perfect. We explain why. The myth of 100% accuracy It’s important to set realistic expectations. No facial age estimation model can achieve 100% accuracy across all ages. Human aging is highly individual and shaped by many external factors, especially as we get
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Jun 25, 2025
Ireland’s Online Safety Code: what it means for online platforms and how to comply
What you need to know: Ireland’s Online Safety Code will hold video-sharing platforms accountable for keeping their users, especially children, safe online. Platforms with adult content, including pornographic or extremely violent content, must use age assurance to prevent children from accessing the content. These age assurance requirements come into force in July 2025. Platforms that don’t comply can face strong penalties – up to €20 million or 10% of annual turnover. From July 2025, video-sharing platforms in Ireland with pornography or extremely violent content will need to introduce age assurance to protect children from accessing their content.
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Jun 17, 2025
"We need an army of Elliots" - why it’s bonkers we’re not using facial age estimation to sell alcohol
Let’s just get this out there: humans are not great at guessing ages. Don’t just take our word for it. Studies have proven this to be the case. Most of us reckon we can largely say if someone is under 25 using the Challenge 25 technique but when put to the test, the truth comes out: retailers do let some under 18s buy alcohol. Not always and not everyone, but some people are incorrectly estimated to be older than they really are. Let’s be honest, this is not ideal. Now, to be fair, not all humans are created equal.
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Jun 16, 2025
Why facial age estimation, the most accurate age checking tool, shouldn’t be left on the sidelines
Many of us have been there: standing at a self-checkout, scanning our shopping, only to hit a roadblock when the till flags an age-restricted item like a bottle of wine or a pack of beer. With age verification accounting for between 40 – 50% of interventions at self-checkouts, it significantly disrupts and slows down the checkout experience. We wait for a retail worker to approve the sale. The retail worker does a visual estimation of our age – they look at our face and guess whether we’re old enough to buy the item. Most retailers follow the Challenge 25
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Jun 09, 2025
Why testing data is as important as training data for machine learning models
When developing machine learning systems for facial age estimation, the conversation often centres on the training data: how much you have, how diverse it is, how inclusive it is, and how well it represents your end users. Not to mention, where the data comes from. Intuitively, that focus makes sense. More data presumably leads to better models. But test data is just as important, and in some ways, even more critical for ensuring models perform effectively. Training data: more isn’t always better Common sense would suggest that for a machine learning model “the more data, the better.” And that’s