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Apple's Siri AI will be powered by Gemini Last week, Roblox made its verification check mandatory for anyone using chat. Roblox's age-verification system was designed as a response to allegations it has a child predator problem . Well, reported on Tuesday that, in some cases, it's classifying children as adults and adults as children. Last week, Roblox made age verification mandatory for anyone using the platform's chat feature. That process involves either submitting a facial age estimate via selfie or (optionally for anyone 13 or older) uploading a government ID check.

Roblox's AI-Powered Age Verification Is a Complete Mess Kids are being identified as adults--and vice versa--on Roblox, while age-verified accounts are already being sold online. Just days after launching, Roblox's much-hyped AI-powered age verification system is a complete mess. Roblox's face scanning system, which estimates peoples' ages before they can access the platform's chat functions, rolled out in the US and other countries around the world last week, after initially launching in a few locations in December. Roblox says it is implementing the system to allow users to safely chat with users of similar ages. But players are already in revolt because they can no longer chat to their friends, developers are demanding Roblox roll back the update, and crucially, experts say that not only is the AI mis-aging young players as adults and vice versa, the system does little to help address the problem it was designed to tackle: the flood of predators using the platform to groom young children.

Online gaming escaped Australia's social media ban - but critics say it's just as addictive Wednesday afternoons have become a ritual for 15-year-old Sadmir Perviz. It's a circuitous route from home in Perth to the Fiona Stanley Hospital - but it's worth it, he says, to sit down for a game of Dungeons & Dragons with people he may not know but with whom he shares a great deal in common. Sadmir and his board game companions are just some of the 300 patients at the gaming disorder clinic, Australia's only publicly-run institution of its type, helping patients wean themselves off excessive online gaming habits. The room where they meet is a simple space in a faceless hospital but in the corner, there's a pile of boardgames on a chair. Jenga, Uno and Sushi Go are also popular choices at the informal group which is attended by both patients and clinicians.

Elon Musk Said Grok's Roasts Would Be'Epic' at Parties--So I Tried It on My Coworkers It went about as well as you'd expect. We can debate the worthiness of Elon Musk's accomplishments--building up Tesla, hollowing out the government, shooting for Mars --but we can all agree that his insistence on being seen as funny is his most grating quality. From the constant 4:20 references to his quote tweet "dunks" to awarding " Certified Bangers " badges to silly X posts, Musk's desperation for validation knows no bounds. It can get pretty annoying when the richest guy on earth makes a joke and then awkwardly eyes the room waiting for everyone to laugh. But over the weekend, I was intrigued when a clip emerged of Musk telling Joe Rogan that using Grok's Unhinged Mode to deliver an "epic vulgar roast" is a surefire way to "make people really laugh at a party."

YouTuber "Schlep built a huge following tracking down alleged child predators on Roblox before being kicked off. The platform is facing multiple lawsuits over child safety. Last month, Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman announced the details of yet another lawsuit against Roblox over suspected pedophiles lurking on the hugely popular gaming platform. While doing so, Coleman singled out the work of one self-described "predator hunter" who claims to have helped identify alleged abusers mixing with young gamers. "Roblox is even trying to silence those who raised these security risks," Coleman said. "The famous case of one of their developers, Schlep, immediately comes to mind." Schlep is in fact Michael, a 22-year-old Texan who has spent the last two years working with a group of other Roblox players to track down and identify people purportedly seeking to groom young children on the platform--predators like the one Schlep says allegedly groomed him a decade ago, which he says led ...

Sarah Martin investigates the virtual world of the children's online game Roblox with the profile of an eight-year-old girl with parental control settings turned on. Sarah Martin investigates the virtual world of the children's online game Roblox with the profile of an eight-year-old girl with parental control settings turned on. In seven days my young alter ego is cyberbullied and attacked while exploring clubs, casinos and horror games, all with parental controls in place. Is the platform safe for children - or an'X-rated paedophile hellscape'? Wed 5 Nov 2025 09.00 ESTLast modified on Wed 5 Nov 2025 09.01 EST I am an eight-year-old girl, standing near-naked in a room full of strangers. As the room spins and zooms upon me and people glide around me, I clock my features.

There are a lot of popular games I haven't personally connected with, including The Sims, Minecraft, pretty much anything that looks like anime. Roblox is among them--oh yeah, Among Us too--and I've seen some of the more problematic issues with it. But last week, Roblox recorded 45 million people playing its various modes at once. According to Roblox CEO David Baszucki, the game-slash-service surpassed 45 million players on August 23rd. And I don't just mean for a single Steam game.

In July, Siyan, a UK-based Discord user, logged on one morning and found himself unable to access some of his text chats marked NSFW. The channel, a popup informed him, was now age-restricted. The United Kingdom had enacted its far reaching child safety laws, which includes an age requirement system to verify users are over 18. Discord's updates required users to verify their age, either by government ID or a face scan. Siyan (who requested to only be referred to by his screen name for privacy reasons) describes himself as "painfully over the age of needing to fake an ID." He didn't want to take a photo of his ID.

Roblox is rolling out new features aimed at making the platform safer for minors, including a revamped friend system, privacy tools, and age verification services users submit by recording a video selfie. In Roblox's old friend system, players have no distinction between people they know casually or online versus someone they consider a close friend. The platform's new tiered system introduces Connections and Trusted Connections specifically for people that players know and trust. To access Trusted Connections and its benefits, users first need to complete an age verification, which requires them to submit a video selfie. Once they've submitted their video, the company says it's run against an AI-driven "diverse dataset" to get an age estimation.