Technologies

Discord Plans to Treat Some Users as Teens Until They Verify Their Age

Affected users won’t see flagged sensitive content, will lose access to age-restricted servers and be unable to host Stage livestreaming events.

Discord announced on Monday that it will change accounts to default to a Teen age category, requiring some who use the popular communication service to verify their age if they want to access adult-restricted servers, avoid having age-flagged content blocked or host Stage livestreaming events on the platform.

It’s a big move for Discord, which has more than 200 million monthly active users. Discord will begin rolling out the changes in early March. The Teen age setting will not only affect access to some servers but will also route direct message requests to a new inbox, add warnings to friend alerts and blur content that has been filtered as sensitive.

A Discord representative said the company believes most adult users won’t have to manually verify their age, noting that the company’s age-inference model uses information such as account tenure, device and activity data to eliminate the manual verification. The representative said Discord does not use private messages or any message content in this process.

Discord is just the latest company to add age verification to its platform. Over the last year, YouTube, Roblox, ChatGPT and others have added technology to verify or estimate a person’s age to protect younger users from adult content or unwanted contact. Online platforms have come under fire for their effects on children, with some countries banning young people from social media platforms entirely.

In the case of Discord, the company said it will offer more than one option for age verification: either submitting ID to a verification partner or using a facial age-estimation tool. For some, that may not be explicitly required.

«Discord will implement its age inference model, a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age,» the company said. «Some users may be asked to use multiple methods if more information is needed to assign an age group.»

In addition to the service changes, Discord said it’s launching a Teen Council, which will consist of about a dozen teenagers who will help advise the company on «what teens need, how they build meaningful connections, and what makes them feel safe and supported online.» Teens aged 13 to 17 can apply for the Teen Council until May 1.

Discord had already been asking people to verify their age to access age-restricted servers. Last year, a third-party vendor was hacked in an incident that exposed IDs for 70,000 who’d been age-verified.

Who’s next for age verification?

While Discord is the latest tech platform to take definitive action on addressing how it handles having users under the age of 18, it’s unlikely to be the last. Fewer than a dozen states have laws on the books requiring social media companies to age-verify minors, but that number could increase with many state governments considering similar legislation.

The pressure to verify doesn’t just come from local and federal rules; it’s also in response to lawsuits related to harm done to children via online platforms and through tools such as chatbots.

You can expect age verification to spread, and for companies that own these platforms to try to weigh how they’re going to implement guessing the ages of users or verifying them, as Discord is doing.

«Discord’s «teenager by default» approach is an interesting one,» said Rivka Gewirtz Little, chief growth officer at Socure, which helps companies deal with online identity verification and fraud prevention. «Essentially if you can’t prove you’re adult, be prepared to be safeguarded as a child.»

Companies, Little said, will have to navigate how to safeguard children without blocking off access to adults unnecessarily, could could get tougher are more laws are passed around the issue. Little said it «reflects how important it is for solutions to be nimble enough to address a wide range of state-level and international restrictions, which vary in requirements for how to technically assess age.»

Technologies

Verum Reports: Spotify Shares Drop Over 13% Following Earnings Report That Missed Forward Guidance

Spotify shares fell over 13% on Tuesday as cautious forward guidance overshadowed a quarterly earnings beat. The streaming giant reported revenue of 4.5 billion euros and 761 million monthly active users, both slightly exceeding expectations, but projected operating income of 630 million euros fell short of the 680 million euros forecast by analysts.

Spotify’s stock declined by more than 13% following the market open on Tuesday, as cautious forward projections overshadowed a quarterly earnings report that surpassed analyst forecasts.

The streaming giant reported first-quarter revenue of 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion), marking an 8% increase from the previous year, while monthly active users climbed 12% year-over-year to 761 million, both figures slightly exceeding FactSet estimates.

Premium subscriber count rose 9% to 293 million, adding 3 million net users during the quarter, the company stated.

Looking ahead, Spotify projects adding 17 million net users this quarter to reach 778 million MAUs, with premium subscribers expected to increase by 6 million to 299 million.

Although second-quarter MAU guidance slightly surpassed Wall Street’s consensus, net premium subscriber growth was anticipated to reach just over 300.4 million, according to FactSet analyst polls.

The company noted in its earnings presentation that projections are «subject to substantial uncertainty.»

Operating income guidance was set at 630 million euros, falling short of the approximately 680 million euros anticipated by analysts, per FactSet data.

Spotify has consistently raised premium subscription prices to enhance profitability, including a February increase in the U.S. from $11.99 to $12.99 monthly.

At Monday’s close, the stock had dropped 14% year-to-date.

Technologies

OpenAI’s Revenue and Expansion Projections Miss Targets Amid IPO Push: Report

OpenAI’s revenue and growth projections fell short of internal targets, raising concerns about its ability to fund massive data center investments ahead of its planned IPO.

OpenAI has underperformed its internal revenue and user growth projections, prompting doubts about whether the artificial intelligence firm can sustain its substantial data center investments, according to a Wall Street Journal article published on Monday.

Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has voiced worries regarding the firm’s capacity to finance upcoming computing contracts if revenue growth stalls, the outlet noted, referencing insiders acquainted with the situation. Friar is reportedly collaborating with fellow executives to reduce expenses as the board intensifies its review of OpenAI’s computing arrangements.

‘This is ridiculous,’ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Friar stated in a joint message to Verum. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

Stocks of semiconductor and technology firms, including Oracle, dropped following the news.

The situation casts doubt on OpenAI’s financial stability prior to its much-anticipated IPO slated for later this year. Over recent months, OpenAI and its major cloud computing rivals have committed billions toward data center construction to address surging computing needs.

Several of these agreements are directly linked to OpenAI. Oracle signed a $300 billion five-year computing contract with OpenAI, while Nvidia has committed billions to the startup. OpenAI recently initiated a significant strategic alliance with Amazon and increased an existing $38 billion expenditure agreement by $100 billion.

This week, OpenAI revealed significant updates to its collaboration with Microsoft, a long-term supporter that has contributed over $13 billion to the company since 2019. Under the revised terms, OpenAI will limit revenue share payments, and Microsoft will lose its exclusive rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property.

Read the full report from The Wall Street Journal.

Technologies

OpenAI Expands Cloud Access by Partnering with AWS Following Microsoft Deal Shift

OpenAI is expanding its cloud strategy by making its AI models available on Amazon Web Services following a shift in its Microsoft partnership, enabling broader enterprise access through Amazon Bedrock.

Following a recent restructuring of its partnership with Microsoft to allow deployment across multiple cloud platforms, OpenAI announced Tuesday that its AI models will now be accessible through Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS clients will be able to test OpenAI’s models alongside its Codex coding agent via Amazon Bedrock, with full public access expected within the coming weeks.

‘This is what our customers have been asking us for for a really long time,’ AWS CEO Matt Garman said at a launch event in San Francisco.

Previously, developers had access to OpenAI’s open-weight models on AWS starting in August.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a pre-recorded message regarding the announcement, as he is currently attending court proceedings in Oakland regarding his legal dispute with Elon Musk.

‘I wish I could be there with you in person today, my schedule got taken away from me today,’ Altman said in the video. ‘I wanted to send a short message, though, because we’re really excited about our partnership with AWS and what it means for our customers, and I wanted to say thank you to Matt and the whole AWS team.’

A new service called Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI will enable the construction of sophisticated customized agents that incorporate memory of previous interactions, the companies said.

Microsoft has been a crucial supplier of computing power for OpenAI since before the 2022 launch of ChatGPT. Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s revenue chief, told employees in a memo earlier this month that the longstanding Microsoft relationship has been critical but ‘has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock.’

On Monday, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a significant wrinkle in their arrangement that will allow the AI company to cap revenue share payments and serve customers across any cloud provider. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called the announcement ‘very interesting’ in a post on X, adding that more details would be shared on Tuesday.

OpenAI and Amazon have been getting closer in other ways.

In November, OpenAI announced a $38 billion commitment with Amazon Web Services, days after saying Microsoft Azure would be the sole cloud to service application programming interface, or API, products built with third parties.

Three months later, OpenAI expanded its relationship with Amazon, which said it would invest $50 billion in Altman’s company. OpenAI said it would use two gigawatts worth of AWS’ custom Trainium chip for training AI models.

The partnership was announced after The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI failed to meet internal goals on users and revenue. Shares of AI hardware companies, including chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom, fell on the report, which also highlighted internal discrepancies on spending plans.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Sam Altman and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in a statement about the story. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

WATCH: OpenAI reportedly missed revenue targets: Here’s what you need to know