Comment by Jonovono
13 hours ago
For some reason ChatGPT has suddenly started thinking i'm a teen. Every answer it starts out "Since you are a teen I will..." and prompts me to upload an ID to show my age. I'm 35.
13 hours ago
For some reason ChatGPT has suddenly started thinking i'm a teen. Every answer it starts out "Since you are a teen I will..." and prompts me to upload an ID to show my age. I'm 35.
OpenAI demanded I prove my age in November 2025. I’m an educated 50 year old and had been paying for the service for over a year. When they insisted I prove my age I went through two layers of support but got nowhere. They insisted I go through their verification process. I refused and cancelled my subscription. This may be a losing battle but I’m not going to upload a photo to these services.
I don't get it. They're doing everything they can to create roadblocks to adoption. They don't accept prepaid cards, they restrict certain models behind extended verification processes and the list goes on. They got a lucky head-start and seem to have assumed they've built some impenetrable moat.
Does OpenAI have an incentive to get age prediction "wrong" so that more people "verify" their ages by uploading an ID or scanning their face, allowing "OpenAI" to collect more demographic data just in time to enable ads?
YES. They all do. Everyone is dripping to get their hands on your biometric data and medical info.
I have worked in this space, and my experience was that usually age / identity verification is driven by regulatory or fraud requirements. Usually externally imposed.
Product managers hate this, they want _minimum_ clicks for onboarding and to get value, any benefit or value that could be derived from the data is miniscule compared to the detrimental effect on signups or retention when this stuff is put in place. It's also surprisingly expensive per verification and wastes a lot of development and support bandwidth. Unless you successfully outsource the risk you end up with additional audit and security requirements due to handling radioactive data. The whole thing is usually an unwanted tarpit.
6 replies →
Absolutely. Profile building.
Maybe they should start scanning users' irises.
Oh yes. In fact, I read on Reddit that they have secret project to use Worldcoin.
> simple way to confirm their age and restore their full access with a selfie through Persona, a secure identity-verification service
The normalization of identity verification to use internet services is itself a problem. It's described much better than I could by EFF here:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/so-youve-hit-age-gate-...
The EFF are fighting a losing battle:
> we hope we’ll win in getting existing ones overturned and new ones prevented.
All the momentum is in the other direction and not slowing down. There are valid privacy concerns, but, buried in this very article, the EFF admit that it’s possible to do age-gating in a privacy-preserving way:
> it’s possible to only reveal your age information when you use a digital ID. If you’re given that choice, it can be a good privacy-preserving option
If they want to take a realistic approach to age-gating they should be campaigning to make this approach only option.
"How do you do, fellow kids? Err...skibidi toilet?" That should work, it's at least three years old now I think?
Forever young, my dude. Forever young.
Haha ya I asked my my younger brother if he’s gotten it and he said he didn’t. I’m like alright I must give off youthful vibes ;)
sigma rizzler, no cap.