Instagram to rely on AI and ML to keep teens safer

Instagram’s features are aimed toward keeping teens safer online and prevent them from potentially inappropriate interactions. Instagram will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to apply age-appropriate features to the app.

Instagram requires users to be of 13 years at least to use the app and has asked new users to provide the age while signing up for the account. But there might be some discrepancies and age verification is a complex routine, what with some companies still grappling with the same. Therefore, the motive to introduce technology to determine age-appropriate conversations.

Instagram in its blog update states, it will prevent adults from sending messages to teens under 18 who don’t follow them. The adult in this case will receive an update stating that DM isn’t an option. The feature will rely on machine learning to predict people’s ages combining it with the data that the user gives while signing up.

The California-based social media giant states that in the coming weeks, it'll start exploring ways to make it more difficult for adults, who have been exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior, to interact with teens. The feature may include things like restricting these adults from seeing teen accounts in 'Suggested Users', preventing them from discovering teen content in Reels or Explore, and automatically hiding their comments on public posts by teens.

Instagram, in the US, has also collaborated with The Child Mind Institute and ConnectSafety to publish a New Parents Guide, which among other things includes a list of safety tools and privacy settings. The guide is now available, in collaboration with expert partners, in other countries like Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and Singapore, and will be rolled out in more countries soon, states Instagram blog.