Public Funding for Avid Certification Services Limited

With a tsunami of global legislation demanding that the Internet becomes "age-aware", the demand for online age assurance will continue to grow exponentially. AI-based age estimation, with age discerned from biometric or behavioural features, is a critical means of age assurance, particularly for children and other vulnerable groups without documentation or records. But these methods are increasingly becoming vulnerable to AI-generated attacks, and the perception of vulnerability to them, which could allow users to fake their age online and seriously undermine faith in age assurance technologies. It is well established that biometric systems are vulnerable to presentation/spoofing attacks (PADs) and injection attacks (IADs). However in the last 12 months, increasingly sophisticated systems available on consumer devices and applications have begun to make it easier for anyone to conduct basic AI generated facial (deepfake) and audio spoof attacks on systems. Indeed, there were over 80 deep fake apps found online in 2023 and they are observed to be improving in quality all the time. Previous research has been conducted by our Swiss research partner, IDIAP, on various attack vectors and synthetic data, and by AVID on the standardization of testing. We want to build on this research and advance it to create defences against these attacks, not only for our Swiss Age Verification partner, Privately SA, but also to share the general lessons learnt with the AV industry as a whole through their trade association, the AVPA. This project will develop technology identifying AI-generated presentation and injection attacks across emerging methods of age assurance, including facial analysis, voiceprint analysis and game play. It will then standardize methods to test the defences AV Providers implement against them. AVID's comprehensive testing procedures and state-of-the-art technology will protect the integrity clients of the industry as a whole from allowing inappropriate access to underage users and the legal,commercial and ethical consequences associated with that, while the AVPA consults with other providers in the industry to ensure a joined up response to this threat which could undermine credibility in all forms of online age assurance This new technology will help provide children enhanced protection from exposure to goods, content or services that may cause them or others harm, and comes at the perfect time as global regulatory changes mandate effective and accurate age assurance systems to protect children from harm.