How old are you really? Inside Roblox’s new campaign to verify user ages

Roblox gave NBC News an exclusive look at the biometric age-checking tool that, starting this month, will be used to place the platform’s users into age-based accounts.

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.

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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.