AI content age-gating advisor
When an AI feature can generate content — especially open-ended or mature content — and might be accessed by minors, age assurance stops being optional. The AI content age-gating advisor takes a short description of your feature’s output and audience and returns your likely obligations under the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, the EU Digital Services Act, and COPPA, along with a ranked set of age-assurance options. It runs entirely in your browser.
How it works
You characterise the content your feature can produce (from general to explicit), how constrained the generation is, your target demographic, whether minors can plausibly reach the feature, and your operating jurisdictions. The advisor maps these against the triggers in each regime: the Children’s Code’s risk-based “likely to be accessed by children” test, the DSA’s expectation of proportionate age assurance for risky content, and COPPA’s rules on processing data of under-13s. It then returns the obligations you most likely face and ranks age-assurance options — self-declaration, age estimation, and verified age — by how strongly each satisfies a high-risk scenario, so you can choose a control that matches your risk level rather than over- or under-building.
Tips and notes
- Match assurance to risk. A checkbox is fine for low-risk general content but inadequate where the feature can produce mature material.
- Design for the youngest plausible user. The Children’s Code asks who is likely to access the feature, not who you intend to serve.
- Minimise children’s data. Strong age gating that then hoards minors’ data trades one problem for another — collect the least you can.
- Treat this as scoping. Confirm conclusions with a qualified adviser; these regimes are evolving and enforcement is increasing.