Roblox is getting ready to roll out its latest safety feature
at a time when it is confronting a growing number of lawsuits from states and
families that claim the popular gaming app falsely advertised itself as safe
for children.
The company told WRAL this week that it will soon make users go through AI-powered facial
age-estimation technology to help verify that gamers really are the age they
say they are.
“That will be required to engage in any kind of
communications on the platform,” said Eliza Jacobs, Senior Director of Product
Policy at Roblox. “So, until you use
facial age estimation, you will not have access to chat anywhere on the
platform.”
Jacobs tells WRAL Investigates that Roblox will launch facial age estimation
on Nov. 18 in some parts of the world, including Australia, ahead
of the U.S. launch.
“I think Roblox is starting to get the message, in that
they’re putting up hundreds of millions of dollars most recently into adding
safeguards,” said Mike Grieco, founding partner of Gould Grieco & Hensley.
Related: Only on WRAL: Roblox official answers questions about safety on the app
Grieco represents thousands of families who claim their
children have been preyed upon through Roblox.
One of the families Gould Greico & Hensley represents is
from Wake County. The family claims that their teenage daughter was introduced
to an adult predator while playing Roblox when she was 13 years old. The
lawsuit claims the teen’s communication with the predator moved from Roblox to
Discord, where he coerced her into sending him sexually explicit content.
“Even one of these
cases is too many and our hearts go out to the families who have been affected
in this way. It is unacceptable and we are working around the clock to try and
prevent this as much as we can,” said Jacobs.
Roblox has been steadily rolling out various safeguards in
recent years.
In November 2024, the company announced an ability for
parents to create “parent accounts” that they can link with their child’s new
or existing account.
WRAL Investigates created a parent account and child account to test the
feature, and found the linking process to be straightforward. The app verifies the authenticity of the
parent by having them submit a credit card or ID. Through this, parents can control the maturity
of the experiences their child engages with – minimal, mild or moderate – can see
who their child is connected with, and can control access to the app’s chat
feature. Lawsuits describe how chat can be the gateway for predators – where
trust is built and kids are catfished.
Watch: How to set up parental controls in Roblox: Step-by-step & what’s happening to kids on Roblox
Jacobs acknowledges more work needs to be done to make sure
parents know about this feature.
“We’ve done lots of communications about this, but we
obviously need to do more to really get the word out. We want parents to be
engaged with our parental controls and the systems we have to keep their kids
safe,” said Jacobs, who added that Roblox uses a “safe by default” strategy.
Still, Grieco is skeptical about the effectiveness of the
safety measures in place or expected soon.
“Until all of those measures are foolproof, tested and retested,
I don’t think Roblox is safe to use for any minor,” Grieco said.
In response to Grieco’s advice to abstain from the app,
Jacobs said “we are building systems every day to make [Roblox] even safer.”