The Government Uses AI Age Verification to Win Voters

The Times last week

In the run-up to an election – politicians are looking at emotive subjects to get the public behind them. Recent newspaper reports show that underage drinking and vaping are areas where the government and opposition feel they can make easy wins. And with the new gambling law making some (albeit slow) progress, age verification is well on the government radar for gambling too.

A headline in The Times last week read – “Face Recognition AI will check you’re old enough to buy alcohol”. And as we started this week – news outlets all carried the story that highly flavoured, brightly coloured disposable vapes are set to be banned as part of plans to tackle the rising number of young people taking up the habit. Measures will also be introduced to prevent vapes being marketed at children and, crucially, to target under-age sales.

While various solutions to underage vaping have been suggested – such as a licensing scheme – similar to those around alcohol for retailers – accurate age verification is at the core of the issue and Artificial Intelligence is likely to provide an affordable, achievable solution.

For anyone who might question how difficult it is to tell if a young person is underage, let’s just take the example of 16-year- old professional darts player Luke Littler. While there’s no doubting his talent – the whole nation was left scratching their heads at his mature appearance and demeanour, which could easily have passed for someone double his age.

Andy Bullock and Mike Clokie

“Expecting staff members to make a judgement on a customer’s age for age-restricted goods and services is just not fair on anyone,” says Mike Clokie, Managing Director of e-Service, which supplies the MyCheckr age verification solution from Innovative Technology. “Nobody likes to be age checked – particularly if they are not the age they are pretending to be, so they are defensive and that puts pressure on staff members – many of whom may not be much older than those they are challenging. By using an AI age verification system – the onus is not on the staff member alone – they have back up and that means a lot.”

Andy Bullock, Senior Business Development Manager at Innovative Technology says, “Player Protection was a key focus of the recent gambling reform white paper and our AI-powered biometric technology can help protect vulnerable players – to combat both underage and problem gambling.”

“With our technology now deployed in the field, one key benefit that our customers are reporting is that it is successfully being used as an aid to assist staff during the age check process – as well as performing the vital role of safeguarding licences and fostering responsible gambling. We have seen this particularly in pub retail premises where staff are busy serving customers and cannot always police who is playing on the gaming machines. Our technology can dramatically reduce the need for staff intervention, alerts them to a potential underage player and gives them the confidence to ask for ID.  We expect a lot of interest at ICE and look forward to showing Manufacturers and Operators how they can easily implement our biometric technology on machine to safeguard underage players.”

Dawn Clarke

Dawn Clarke, Head of Electronic Leisure, Mitchells & Butlers, adds, “Using ITL’s age verification on Reflex Gaming machines in our venues is successfully automating the age check process, freeing up time for our staff to serve customers and reducing the need to ask for ID. This is a robust tool for pub retailers to stop minors from playing, further demonstrating our social responsibility obligations, ensuring we meet our licensing objectives and reducing the number of test purchase failures.”

While nobody doubts the efficacy of AI age verification systems such as the Innovative Technology ICU, which was recently showcased at EAG inside the GamePro (Reflex) and Vantage machines (Inspired) machines, there remain some concerns over player reaction. This seems likely to be due to the misconception that the player images are stored in some way and is almost certain to reduce over time with increased education and familiarity. Certainly, the system – while not completely frictionless is as close as possible to a seamless experience.

Reflex Gaming's Quentin Stott

However, just because something is possible and the right thing to do doesn’t mean that the industry will embrace the extra investment from the off, as Quentin Stott explained at the EAG pub summit. “Three years of development on Age Verification and so far commercially for any of us in the supply chain, retailer, operator, manufacturer – there’s been nothing in it. We have these tools available and they are trialling but there’s no mad push to get them into the marketplace,” he said.

That said, Quentin is still upbeat about the opportunities, “With a number of site trials ongoing and more in the pipeline, we look forward to a widescale rollout in 2024. We are proud to be the first machine supplier with an on-machine AV solution using ICU Lite from Innovative Technology.”

But what will happen should the Government insist on these systems, as they seem intent on doing for alcohol and vapes in retail outlets? This certainly seems to be the direction of travel as The Times headline revealed. AI Age Verification is on the Government’s radar and should even just one of these sectors become bound by legislation – demand for these AI age verification systems will be incredible. What’s more, looking positively at the investment from the gaming industry in age verification technology – it might also allow us greater freedoms in terms of game design, the use of debit cards for Cat C play and of course increased stakes and prizes in the future.

Return to the previous page

31 January 2024

See all news...