Facial analysis software is tested in France for the age of gambling players

La Française des jeux, the leading French player in gambling and gambling, tested facial analysis software for three months to assess whether players are of legal age.

A facial scan to determine age

To be able to play, young customers had the option of presenting their identity card or having their face scanned at a terminal installed in the store, explained Florian Chevoppe-Verdier, in charge of public policy at Yoti, a world leader in this rapidly developing sector, on the occasion of the International Cybersecurity Forum. The company, which has trained artificial intelligence on millions of faces, says it determines age with an accuracy of 1.6 years.

“We therefore set the bar at 20 years,” explained its manager during a conference. If the age is estimated below, the person will have to show an identity document, he added. Questioned by AFP, the FDJ indicated that it had been working “for a year on image analysis and majority certification solutions” with Yoti, specifying that these were still “prototypes”.

This solution is already widely used in the United Kingdom, in hypermarkets for the purchase of alcohol or, also in testing, in tobacconists. Yoti is also an Instagram partner around the world to ban people under 13 from the social network. The user must take a video of his face “and, if you are asked to replace the camera, it is to make sure that you are real”, underlines the company.

Yoti, a member of the Child Protection Laboratory set up by the Élysée in November, also hopes to be selected as a technical solution and as a trusted third party for online age verification, which will be imposed in particular on sites pornographic. “If the government made up its mind, we could activate an age rating on all porn sites within 24 hours,” the Yoti manager assured.

System not perfect

His technique does not allow identification but only to assess the age. It is based on the analysis of anonymized facial pixels and the photos are not stored, he stressed. Florian Chevoppe-Verdier however recognized that the system was not infallible. “For example, a life on the streets prematurely ages the face,” he explained. This is why, in the United Kingdom, Yoti refused to assess the age of migrants.