It’s too early to know how this law will settle into full implementation, but its implications are clear: For determined kids, it’s relatively easy to cheat; for everyone else, suddenly required to prove their ages, it’s a major privacy setback. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation puts it:

If the AI falsely identifies your age, and you can't prove otherwise, the restrictions won't be removed. AI age verification is coming to YouTube, and it's almost certainly going to be a frustrating process for some people.

Since introducing supervised teen accounts in 2021, YouTube has continued to add protections aimed at its younger users. The company noted that it has been using this machine learning approach "in other markets for some time, where it is working well."