Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news roadblocks as we've going
Speaker 1: rolling out age verification technology for all users and is
Speaker 1: introducing age based chat as a gaming platform, expands safety
Speaker 1: features with further parental resources too. My bloc CEO David
Speaker 1: Zooki joins us now and Dave. This really builds on
Speaker 1: that big, ambitious September announcement.
Speaker 2: How is this going to be rolling out?
Speaker 3: Hey, great to be here and what an enormous responsibility.
Speaker 3: With one hundred and fifty million users every day coming
Speaker 3: to the platform, We're rolling out what we believe will
Speaker 3: be the gold standard for the future of Internet safety,
Speaker 3: where the first really major gaming platform to use AI
Speaker 3: to estimate the age of everyone on the platform who
Speaker 3: wants to use chat and communicate. We're going to start
Speaker 3: rolling this out in December and then it'll be should
Speaker 3: be all rolled out by January. Basically, on whatever device
Speaker 3: you're on, take a quick image, will analyze your age
Speaker 3: with AI, complement it with a bunch of other signals,
Speaker 3: and use that really to figure out who who might
Speaker 3: you be chatting with? To keep the platform more safe.
Speaker 3: We're not going to be allowing miners, for example, to
Speaker 3: communicate with people who are adults, and we're going to
Speaker 3: roll it out to everyone on the platform.
Speaker 1: I'm really interested as to how you're going to measure
Speaker 1: success here, Dave, because in many ways you're trying to
Speaker 1: prove a negative. But how are you going to be
Speaker 1: internally thinking this has worked, people are satisfied and they're safe.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to highlight things are already working in
Speaker 3: that we're a very unique platform, and that we filter
Speaker 3: all of the text and communication on our platform. We
Speaker 3: don't allow the sharing of images, we have monitoring for
Speaker 3: critical harms. We work very closely with law enforcement. So
Speaker 3: I see this as an addition to everything we're doing
Speaker 3: and really to our vision of what we've been calling
Speaker 3: the gold standard. But we do estimate over the next
Speaker 3: few months will will know roughly the age of everyone
Speaker 3: on the platform, and we'll complement that with some of
Speaker 3: the other things we do, like trusted connections and things
Speaker 3: like that to constantly build on our innovation. You know,
Speaker 3: we've shipped over one hundred safety innovations in the last year,
Speaker 3: so it's really a continuation of that focus.
Speaker 2: You're using a.
Speaker 1: Third party vendor persona I believe, and how are you
Speaker 1: going to be ensuring that that's robust enough. The AI,
Speaker 1: the underlying technology is robust enough. Ever in the UK
Speaker 1: well some of the using Discord, for example, managed to
Speaker 1: bypass previous facial recognition age verification tests.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of other signals we have in addition
Speaker 3: to the facial age estimation, and we do have the
Speaker 3: ability to estimate several times if we need to so,
Speaker 3: so in addition to using the camera to do an
Speaker 3: age check, we have other ways to validate and putting
Speaker 3: all of these signals together, we believe is pretty robust.
Speaker 1: Really, what's so interesting is clearly you're here with safety
Speaker 1: as a priority. You did mention back in the earnings
Speaker 1: your CFO in particular that maybe you'll see some friction,
Speaker 1: maybe the numbers, the revenue, the growth might be impacted
Speaker 1: as people start to have to verify their age, maybe
Speaker 1: slower to come and adopt.
Speaker 2: Do you think that that will bear out? How will
Speaker 2: it look longer term?
Speaker 3: We shared this vision that we believe over ten percent
Speaker 3: of the global gaming market, which is somewhere between a
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty and two hundred billion dollar market,
Speaker 3: is going to be running on roadblocks, and in the
Speaker 3: earnings call, we just had. We shared this amazing growth
Speaker 3: both on bookings and daus in the seventy percent year
Speaker 3: on year rate. Long term, we believe this is just
Speaker 3: the right thing for the platform. We're unique in that
Speaker 3: we have all ages. We have people under thirteen, over thirteen,
Speaker 3: or over thirteen is growing rapidly. This is the right
Speaker 3: long term vision and we're really optimistic about continuing our growth.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is the right balance from your perspective,
Speaker 1: what do you think the data will bear out as
Speaker 1: to the name, Well, ultimately the actual ages of people
Speaker 1: you have using it. Do you think you have more
Speaker 1: under thirteen's you anticipated? Do you think you have more
Speaker 1: older users?
Speaker 3: We can't estimate that exactly. What I can say is
Speaker 3: that our the facial age estimation tech we're going to
Speaker 3: use is pretty reasonable and pretty accurate. I've tried it,
Speaker 3: some of my kids have tried it. We've tried it
Speaker 3: within our staff meeting. So I think we're going to
Speaker 3: find out we're reasonably close. But over time we will
Speaker 3: get a better signal on everyone's age.
Speaker 1: And this must be something that marketiers that those that
Speaker 1: eventually we're buying more ads with.
Speaker 2: Roadblocks are going to be looking at.
Speaker 1: Is this going to help well inject some fuel to
Speaker 1: that offering because people will feel safer about what age
Speaker 1: group can be consuming such.
Speaker 3: A We have shared a couple things. You know, we
Speaker 3: don't target under eighteen already on the platform, but there's
Speaker 3: an enormous number of older users joining the platform. We
Speaker 3: shared in our earnings call I believe in Q four like,
Speaker 3: we're literally earn qth running at over ten billion hours
Speaker 3: a month of engagement. That's an amazing amount of engagement.
Speaker 3: Our economy is primarily driven right now by our virtual
Speaker 3: economy powered by Robucks. But advertising is a wonderful compliment,
Speaker 3: and you're right, we're going to have a better, more
Speaker 3: accurate estimate of everyone's age, which for a lot of
Speaker 3: our advertisers that are starting to hop on with events
Speaker 3: supporting all kinds of things, beauty products, movies, things like that,
Speaker 3: they'll have a better idea of really the number of
Speaker 3: people over eighteen on our platform.
Speaker 1: Reblock CEO David Zooki on the latest safety updates.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate you joining the show today. Thank you,