This seems… wild.
Although, it’s important to keep in mind that this is in the context of COPPA consent, which already required photo ID by the parent for children under the age of 13.
Still, I cannot see this truly going well. It’s smarter than just a picture, sure. But it’s done by a VC-funded private company and by Epic. I’d give it about 12 minutes until archives of thousands of uploaded mini-videos for verification appear on the net, probably public because someone forgot to properly patch the web server.
However to not go all crazy on it: This also opens up the can of “How do we do smarter online age verification, anyways?”. AI-based facial recognition isn’t a sensible one if you ask me, but we need a better way as other countries have already ruled that simply putting in your age or clicking an “i’m 18+”-button is not legally binding and hence cannot be used as verifiable age verification.
God forbid parents take any responsibility here and admit they just need to vet games more. Why is it not mentioned in that article at all how kids are purchasing games now? There are age settings for digital purchases already, if they’re set to a an adult account let’s hold the parents responsible rather than punishing everyone else
Note that COPPA only covers age checks by accident basically (because it applies only to children under 13). It’s more about the types of data a company can collect or make online accounts for the kid for (say an online game they want to play, even if specifically designed for children). A parent has to consent to that, in a verifiable manner.