Recently, the Federal Trade Commission blocked a proposal by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board or ESRB regarding the use of facial recognition technology to verify the age of users buying mature-rated games.
The regulatory body said that the denial vote for the proposal was 4-0 "without prejudice", reasoning that it goes against the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act or COPPA, a law designed to protect the privacy of children aged 13 and under.
COPPA states that the consent of parents is required to collect or use any personal data of underage users.
Last year, ESRB reportedly collaborated with SuperAwesome and Yoti to build a Privacy-Protective Facial Age Estimation technology, which would require users to let their faces get scanned to verify that they are adults.
Following the proposal, FTC received 350 comments about the issue, where some raised concerns about privacy, protections, accuracy, and deepfakes, while some supported the application by saying that it had "sufficient privacy guardrails" to protect the personal data of users.
Even though the proposal was denied, FTC noted that another proposal for a facial age estimation model submitted by Yoti to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in September is still under discussion. If approved, the agency said the tool would assist it in "better understanding age verification technologies".
Additionally, the U.S. regulator provided an option to ESRB to re-submit the application in the future.
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