Discord raises more questions while attempting to quell age verification fury by saying an AI model can look at "patterns of user behavior" to predict how old many folks are anyway

Death Stranding 2 screenshot — (Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Days after announcing unpopular plans to age-lock accounts, Discord has made some clarifications about its "age assurance update," reiterating that "facial scans never leave your device," IDs are "deleted" after getting your age, and a lot of the time it knows who its adult users are because of the "advanced" AI model it's developed to predict folks' ages. That last part feels like it might raise more questions than answers.

Earlier this week, Discord announced that "teen-by-default" settings are rolling out for all users worldwide, as part of its "long-standing commitment to creating a safer and more inclusive experience for users over the age of 13." This means that by default, amongst other things, users will be unable to access age-restricted channels and unblur sensitive content, and direct messages from people you might not know will be "routed to a separate inbox." You can't change these settings without being an "age-assured adult."

Adults can verify their age to gain full access back, but this may require using either "facial age estimation" with a face scan, or submitting "a form of identification" to Discord "vendor partners" – not exactly a tantalizing option only a few months on from a data breach of a third-party provider. At the time, Discord said that around 70,000 users "may have had government-ID photos exposed, which our vendor used to review age-related appeals."

Needless to say, you can understand why folks had concerns, and Discord has added an update to its announcement page to try and address them, although it largely ends up going over the same information as before. Firstly, it reiterates that "Discord is not requiring everyone to complete a face scan or upload an ID" to use the platform, adding that "the vast majority of people can continue using Discord exactly as they do today, without ever being asked to confirm their age."

Discord reckons that "for the majority of adult users, we will be able to confirm your age group using information we already have." It then discusses age prediction, which "allows many adults to access age-appropriate features without completing an explicit age check." This is completed using "an advanced machine learning model," developed at Discord itself, which looks at "patterns of user behavior and several other signals associated with their account" to put them into an age group.

"We only use these signals to assign users to an age group when our confidence level is high; when it isn't, users go through our standard age assurance flow to confirm their age," Discord says. "We do not use your message content in the age estimation model."

As for those other verification methods, it's stated that "facial scans never leave your device. Discord and our vendor partners never receive it." Forms of ID "are used to get your age only and then deleted," it now claims, seemingly backtracking slightly from its previous statement in which it said – in a concerningly vague manner – that "in most cases" they're quickly deleted straight after age confirmation.

Discord also states that it "only receives your age," and that "your identity is never associated with your account." Perhaps most importantly, it's noted that the "dedicated age assurance vendors" it's partnering with "were not involved in the September 2025 data breach of our customer service agent," and "perform these verifications in a way to minimize the data collected and stored."

Looking at the reaction online, people still aren't happy about all this, and you can understand the hesitation. The platform says that "we will be sharing additional information and FAQs in this blog with more details on our approach" in the "coming weeks," which may provide more insight.

UK's controversial online safety law requires Discord users to scan their face to prove they're adults, and somehow Hideo Kojima's own Death Stranding 2 has given privacy-conscious players a workaround.