CANBERRA, Australia—New regulations mandating age verification for major search engines are coming to Australia, Mashable reports.
Due to three industry self-regulatory codes officially being adopted by the Office of the Australian eSafety Commissioner earlier this week, popular search engine providers like Google and Microsoft (Bing) will have to verify the ages of all of their users in the country's digital space.
Classified under a so-called "Schedule 3" code of conduct, age verification is required for even the most basic of web searches as a means to block underage users from viewing material that is age-restricted and considered "harmful to minors."
"It's critical to ensure the layered safety approach which also places responsibility and accountability at critical chokepoints in the tech stack including the app stores and at the device level, the physical gateways to the internet where kids sign-up and first declare their ages,” said Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, in a statement.
According to the new regulations on search engines, those that offer user accounts, like Gmail or Outlook, must "implement appropriate age assurance measures" and "apply tools and/or settings like 'safe search' funcionality, at the highest safety setting by default for an account holder its age assurance systems indicate is likely to be an Australian child." This ultimately means that for users to turn off Safe Search, they have to confirm their age through an age assurance measure.
“We need industry to be building in guardrails that prevent their chatbots engaging in this type of behavior with children," Grant added.
