Love it. We've been playing around with other ideas that are not web related. As the tech improves, less data will be needed to infer age. Strange now, but setting up a microphone at a kiosk or providing a widget-less API for broader use-cases, is not a stretch for piggy-backing. Thank you for the comment.
Good question: regardless of the recording instrument (our lab has many microphones of varying degrees from low > high fidelity), a live person vs. recordings that are played back carry a unique signature.
> There should exist frequencies impossible to reach for anyone but post-pubescent men.... Of course that would make it teen-age verification at best.
Yes and no. Like geology, the more you dig into audio, the more is uncovered and available.
A child/teen with a deep voice has very unique perturbations that don't exist in other cohorts across feature sets. Adults may share some characteristics, but not at the levels found in specific age groups.
> Your comment brought my mind to voice actors. They easily change their voices. Deep fakes also come to mind.
Voice actors, deep fakes, replay attacks (recordings from a TV/computer/phone) - mitigated. As in my earlier comment where teen voices have a signature, these all have unique signatures as well. The ongoing part is staying up-to-date with the latest synthetic (deep fakes/AI generated) as those are getting better each day.
> How would we trust your platform to not store voice fingerprints, then?
This is a good question. Other than having it be more expensive to keep this data, and if it were true, destroy the company whose core tenant is literally that... you can't.
If you have suggestions for an independent audit, more than happy to add that to our stack where applicable.
When I say it's hard to not collect data, woof. Any fresh AWS account just LOVES to slurp it up by default.
> the difference between "deep-state surveillance digital ID verification" and privacy-preserving ZKPs to verify age
Agreed.
> Also, nothing comes to mind regarding browsers, android devices, or non-mobile devices. As far as I'm aware, no one seems to be in a rush to make this available.
All good! Posting here to get the opinions and feedback from engineering peers.
> I... told it in a higher then normal voice that I was a kid, and it said I was under 18...
Good. If you're pretending to be a kid, you should be blocked. The launch is for sites that allow adults only (should have made that more clear in the post).
Deep voiced teens are THE HARDEST. What I commented earlier about the amount of data available in a clip of audio, that's real - teens have unique signatures that only show in their cohort.
post puberty boys have absolutely have overlap with over 18 adults, if for no other reason then kids can go through puberty at different ages, so some 18 years olds have voices that are just dropping while others have had their voice drop for 6+ years.
You aren't going to be able to find a set of signatures that keeps out a useful number of <18s that doesn't also flag >18s
What do you consider the appropriate false negative/fall positive rate for voices of people aged 16-20? Since you don't give a confidence rating to the determination it's on the service to figure out what it's comfortable with.
