The United Kingdom’s age verification law, which went into effect last month and requires sites that host adult content to ensure their users are not underage, has claimed an unintended victim: Britain’s most tattooed man. According to a report from Metro, the man who has 90% of his body covered in tattoos can’t get sites that require verification via selfie to recognize him.
King Of Ink Land King Body Art The Extreme Ink-Ite (yes, that’s his full name) said platforms that require photo verification to confirm his identity have been befuddled by his face tats. “It’s saying ‘remove your mask’ because the technology is made so you can’t hold up a picture to the camera or wear a mask,” he told Metro. “It’s not like you can do the old John Travolta in Face/Off and change it when you want to. It’s my skin, my permanent identity.”
First, that’s not what happens in Face/Off. John Travolta can’t just swap faces any time he wants. He undergoes an experimental face transplant procedure to take on the appearance of notorious terrorist for hire Castor Troy to obtain information about a bomb planted in Los Angeles, only to have Troy attempt to destroy his face to prevent him from ever being able to take back his true look.
But King Of Ink does accurately raise a real problem with the UK’s verification system. Facial recognition technology contains biases in how it processes people. Studies have found that facial recognition systems often have higher error rates for people of color, including one landmark MIT study that found the error rate for light-skinned men was 0.8%, compared to 34.7% for darker-skinned women. Researchers have also found that human biases when guessing a person’s age are exacerbated by automated systems, leading to potentially inaccurate results. So even if someone isn’t covered in tattoos, there is a decent chance that age verification systems will misidentify them.
The implementation of the UK’s regulations has left a lot to be desired, and not just for the King Of Ink. The age-gating initiative has thus far been thwarted in several ways, with users opting to browse with a VPN to avoid verification requirements as well as using “photo mode” in the video game Death Stranding to present a realistic-looking face that appears old enough to get approved by the checkers. Unfortunately for those who haven’t thwarted the age restriction, it’s more than just pornography that is being restricted in the UK. Reports indicate that content about everything from the ongoing genocide in Gaza to political debates has been locked behind an age gate.
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