While ​the ⁠process has so far focused on the accuracy of photo-based age-assurance software, the initial vetting stage – which guesses a person’s age range based on their general online activity – does not appear to be picking up young users for further checks.” The “initial vetting stage” referred to describes what the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) classifies as “profiling” – using internally deployed AI to gather data, monitor user activity and guess at their age based on what the algorithm finds. Unsurprisingly, this has become the preferred option for social media firms, who pass it off as age inference: they get to use their nifty large language models (LLMs) to collect more data to feed on. And, conveniently, since the platforms control the algorithms, there is no guarantee they work as Meta and company say they do.