How old are you really? Inside Roblox’s new campaign to verify user ages | “Ticking a box to say you’re 13 or older, it’s not enough anymore.”

SAN MATEO, Calif. — One morning in late May, an 11-year-old armed with a fake mustache had a mission: fool Roblox’s age-estimation tool into thinking he was older.

But moments after Cole Moretti looked into the camera, the system flagged him as a child between the ages of 9 and 12. Moretti was one of several children brought in by NBC News to try the technology at Roblox’s headquarters.

“Sorry, you can tell your friends at school it doesn’t work,” Eliza Jacobs, Roblox’s vice president of safety product policy, told Moretti, as she held the iPad in front of him.

Now, Roblox is launching separate age-based accounts for minors. Those ages 5 to 8 will be placed in Roblox Kids accounts, which disable all messaging by default and restrict users to games with a content maturity label of “minimal” or “mild.” Users ages 9 to 15 will be in Roblox Select accounts, which gradually introduce more chat functions and allow access to games up to “moderate” content maturity. Users 16 and up will generally have the full suite of Roblox games and chat functions.

It’s a setup that builds on the platform’s recent rule change requiring all users to provide a government ID to prove their age, or to undergo biometric age checks to use the chat function. That process automatically estimates users’ ages and permits them to chat only with others estimated to be in similar age ranges.

But the company’s age verification measures have also been controversial, stirring questions about user privacy — Roblox says its third-party vendor, Persona, immediately deletes biometric data after age estimation — as well as inaccurate age estimations or work-arounds found by users hoping to trick the system.

Jacobs said Roblox’s AI-powered technology estimates ages based on facial structure and typically lands within 1.4 years of a child’s exact age.

“We’re optimistic that it will continue to get better and better. But as compared to picking your birthday on a drop-down list, it’s much more accurate,” Jacobs said, adding that Roblox believes the era of self-declared age selections is over. “Ticking a box to say you’re 13 or older, it’s not enough anymore.”

“I do like to hear that Roblox is taking it seriously, that there are more guardrails with privacy,” said Carroll. “Hopefully more businesses and more companies will use this as the model to say this is what we need to do to protect our kids.”