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Age-gating comes to New Zealand

The governments of both Australia and the UK have announced the introduction of age-gating for accessing certain popular social media websites.

Apparently the state now wishes also take on the role of parenting when it comes to kids in these countries.

However, before we here in Godzone get too smug that we do not have such measures on the books, we should be aware that age-gating is about to hit home and it comes from a perhaps unexpected direction.

Although there has been discussion of introducing age-gating for teens here in NZ, there are no official plans in place. Never the less, under 16-year-old Kiwi teens are about to find themselves disconnected from at least a few of their favourite social media websites and other Kiwis may have to prove their age before being granted access to those same sites.

Yeah, this came as a surprise to me too.

However, if this BBC story is to be believed, game platform Roblox will be blocking under-16s in NZ from using the chat features available on its site.

Roblox isn't even on the list of sites that governments have determined to qualify for age-gating but they're acting preemptively to avoid being added to that list.

YouTube is also rolling out age-gating or at least age/ID verification in various territories around the world and NZ is bound to be on that list pretty soon. It's highly likely that other major social media platforms such as Facebook and others will follow pretty quickly afterwards.

The era of online anonymity is drawing to a close... but it was great while it lasted.

And in other concerning developments -- Google has advised that it will be using the contents of pretty much any data that flows through its GMail system (including attachments) to continue the training of its AI systems.

Yes, that's right, even your most confidential attachments (unless they're encrypted) will be contributing to the "smarts" that makes AI what it is -- unless you opt out of course.

Given that some AI systems have already been shown leak sensitive information I would strongly recommend that anyone reading this immediately turns off the AI training options that exist within the settings for their GMail accounts.

And finally, another nod to AI...

It seems that, as I've previously reported, AI is posing a far greater threat to the creative industries than anyone could have possibly imagined just a few short years ago.

Now The Guardian reports that More than half of UK novelists believe AI will replace their work.

Owch!

I also heard today from a music attorney on YouTube that over 50,000 AI-generated tracks are now being uploaded to Spotify EVERY DAY. Given that 80 percent of people (apparently) can not distinguish what's AI-generated music and what's not, the effect on genuine musicians is hugely significant. This tsunami of AI-tunes is diluting the online catalog so much that revenues are falling from already record-low levels for real musicians to unsustainably low rates.

There are some who say that this actually threatens the entire music streaming model to such an extent that within a fairly short period of time virtually all the new uploads will be AI generated and those who previously earned a living from their musical talents will be flipping burgers or busking for a crust.

A regular reader also sent me a link to this story Net Zero AI which is well worth a read.

Carpe Diem folks!

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