iPhone 17-Small Price Hike; VPN Use Way Up in UK; YouTube Bows Age Estimation Tech; Google Will Sign EU’s AI Code of Practice

Apple is apparently planning a $50 across the board price hike for all iPhone 17 models. macrumors.com reports that this is to offset rising component costs and the China tariffs. The news came in an investor note from Jefferies analyst Edison Lee. Actually, with Trump’s China tariffs, Apple is eating a lot of the cost increase, but has decided to pass at least some of it on to consumers. Cupertino will try to position the increase as worth it due to new features and design changes, and won’t blame the hike on the tariffs…not wanting to anger the thin-skinned Donald Trump. 

The Online Safety Act just went into effect last Friday in the United Kingdom. That’s the law that requires porn platforms and other adult content sites to implement user age verifications. Not shockingly, the use of VPNs…virtual private networks, has spiked already. According to wired.com, experts had expected such a surge. Besides VPNs, apparently users are also trying a video game called Death Stranding that has a photo mode to take a selfie of a character and submit it to the age-gated forum content. What the Online Safety Act requires is that websites hosting porn, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content implement “highly effective” age checks for visitors from the UK. These checks can include uploading an ID document and selfie for validation and analysis. On the up side for the UK regulators, over 6,600 pro websites have introduced age checks so far. I am still processing the fact that there are that many porn websites. I don’t think I’ve ever visited even close to that many websites of any kind in my life! 

There is a good deal of resistance and skepticism about age verification online…as in our story yesterday about an app designed to protect women from bad dates that got hacked and their driver’s licenses were compromised. Now, techcrunch.com says YouTube is taking a different approach, rolling out age-estimation tech to identify US teens so they can apply additional protections for the kids. The company says it will use a variety of signals to determine the users’ possible age, regardless of what the user entered as their birthday when they signed up for an account. When the platform marks someone as a teen, it introduces new protections and experiences, which include disabling personalized advertising, safeguards that limit repetitive viewing of certain types of content, and enabling digital well-being tools such as screen time and bedtime reminders, among others. These are the same safeguards as are in effect already for those who have identified as teens…now YouTube will use their system to check. If someone is flagged as a teen and isn’t, they have the option to verify their age with a credit card, government ID, or selfie. DON’T give them your driver’s license! 

Google has announced that it will sign the European Union’s AI Code of Practice. Engadget.com notes that the Act was passed in 2024, but many parts of it have yet to go into effect…they will take months or even years. The Code is a non-binding, voluntary pact. Meta has said it won’t sign on, calling the Code ‘over-reach.’ The EU’s AI Act is the first of its kind from a major regulator and is comprehensive in its approach. Meanwhile, the United States is in the earliest stages of determining its approach to AI regulation Obligations under the EU AI act start kicking in on August 1st of this year, with all AI models to be fully compliant by August of 2027.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.