Generative artificial intelligence models have left such an indelible impact on digital content creation that it’s getting harder to recall what the internet was like before it. You can call on these AI tools for clever projects such as videos and photos — but their flair for the creative hasn’t quite crossed over into the physical world just yet.

So why haven’t we seen generative AI-enabled personalized objects, such as phone cases and pots, in places like homes, offices, and stores yet? According to MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers, a key issue is the mechanical integrity of the 3D model.

While AI can help generate personalized 3D models that you can fabricate, those systems don’t often consider the physical properties of the 3D model. MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) PhD student and CSAIL engineer Faraz Faruqi has explored this trade-off, creating generative AI-based systems that can make aesthetic changes to designs while preserving functionality, and another that modifies structures with the desired tactile properties users want to feel.

Making it real 

Together with researchers at Google, Stability AI, and Northeastern University, Faruqi has now found a way to make real-world objects with AI, creating items that are both durable and exhibit the user’s intended appearance and texture. With the AI-powered “MechStyle” system, users simply upload a 3D model or select a preset asset of things like vases and hooks, and prompt the tool using images or text to create a personalized version. A generative AI model then modifies the 3D geometry, while MechStyle simulates how those changes will impact particular parts, ensuring vulnerable areas remain structurally sound. When you’re happy with this AI-enhanced blueprint, you can 3D print it and use it in the real world.

You could select a model of, say, a wall hook, and the material you’ll be printing it with (for example, plastics like polylactic acid). Then, you can prompt the system to create a personalized version, with directions like, “generate a cactus-like hook.” The AI model will work in tandem with the simulation module and generate a 3D model resembling a cactus while also having the structural properties of a hook. This green, ridged accessory can then be used to hang up mugs, coats, and backpacks. Such creations are possible thanks, in part, to a stylization process, where the system changes a model’s geometry based on its understanding of the text prompt, and working with the feedback received from the simulation module.

According to CSAIL researchers, 3D stylization used to come with unintended consequences. Their formative study revealed that only about 26 percent of 3D models remained structurally viable after they were modified, meaning that the AI system didn’t understand the physics of the models it was modifying.

“We want to use AI to create models that you can actually fabricate and use in the real world,” says Faruqi, who is a lead author on a paper presenting the project. “So MechStyle actually simulates how GenAI-based changes will impact a structure. Our system allows you to personalize the tactile experience for your item, incorporating your personal style into it while ensuring the object can sustain everyday use.”

This computational thoroughness could eventually help users personalize their belongings, creating a unique pair of glasses with speckled blue and beige dots resembling fish scales, for example. It also produced a pillbox with a rocky texture that’s checkered with pink and aqua spots. The system’s potential extends to crafting unique home and office decor, like a lampshade resembling red magma. It can even design assistive technology fit to users’ specifications, such as finger splints to aid with dexterous injuries and utensil grips to aid with motor impairments.

In the future, MechStyle could also be useful in creating prototypes for accessories and other handheld products you might sell in a toy shop, hardware store, or craft boutique. The goal, CSAIL researchers say, is for both expert and novice designers to spend more time brainstorming and testing out different 3D designs, instead of assembling and customizing items by hand.

Staying strong

To ensure MechStyle’s creations could withstand daily use, the researchers augmented their generative AI technology with a type of physics simulation called a finite element analysis (FEA). You can imagine a 3D model of an item, such as a pair of glasses, with a sort of heat map indicating which regions are structurally viable under a realistic amount of weight, and which ones aren’t. As AI refines this model, the physics simulations highlight which parts of the model are getting weaker and prevent further changes.

Faruqi adds that running these simulations every time a change is made drastically slows down the AI process, so MechStyle is designed to know when and where to do additional structural analyses. “MechStyle’s adaptive scheduling strategy keeps track of what changes are happening in specific points in the model. When the genAI system makes tweaks that endanger certain regions of the model, our approach simulates the physics of the design again. MechStyle will make subsequent modifications to make sure the model doesn’t break after fabrication.”

Combining the FEA process with adaptive scheduling allowed MechStyle to generate objects that were as high as 100 percent structurally viable. Testing out 30 different 3D models with styles resembling things like bricks, stones, and cacti, the team found that the most efficient way to create structurally viable objects was to dynamically identify weak regions and tweak the generative AI process to mitigate its effect. In these scenarios, the researchers found that they could either stop stylization completely when a particular stress threshold was reached, or gradually make smaller refinements to prevent at-risk areas from approaching that mark.

The system also offers two different modes: a freestyle feature that allows AI to quickly visualize different styles on your 3D model, and a MechStyle one that carefully analyzes the structural impacts of your tweaks. You can explore different ideas, then try the MechStyle mode to see how those artistic flourishes will affect the durability of particular regions of the model.

CSAIL researchers add that while their model can ensure your model remains structurally sound before being 3D printed, it’s not yet able to improve 3D models that weren’t viable to begin with. If you upload such a file to MechStyle, you’ll receive an error message, but Faruqi and his colleagues intend to improve the durability of those faulty models in the future.

What’s more, the team hopes to use generative AI to create 3D models for users, instead of stylizing presets and user-uploaded designs. This would make the system even more user-friendly, so that those who are less familiar with 3D models, or can’t find their design online, can simply generate it from scratch. Let’s say you wanted to fabricate a unique type of bowl, and that 3D model wasn’t available in a repository; AI could create it for you instead.

“While style-transfer for 2D images works incredibly well, not many works have explored how this transfer to 3D,” says Google Research Scientist Fabian Manhardt, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “Essentially, 3D is a much more difficult task, as training data is scarce and changing the object’s geometry can harm its structure, rendering it unusable in the real world. MechStyle helps solve this problem, allowing for 3D stylization without breaking the object’s structural integrity via simulation. This gives people the power to be creative and better express themselves through products that are tailored towards them.”

Farqui wrote the paper with senior author Stefanie Mueller, who is an MIT associate professor and CSAIL principal investigator, and two other CSAIL colleagues: researcher Leandra Tejedor SM ’24, and postdoc Jiaji Li. Their co-authors are Amira Abdel-Rahman PhD ’25, now an assistant professor at Cornell University, and Martin Nisser SM ’19, PhD ’24; Google researcher Vrushank Phadnis; Stability AI Vice President of Research Varun Jampani; MIT Professor and Center for Bits and Atoms Director Neil Gershenfeld; and Northeastern University Assistant Professor Megan Hofmann.

Their work was supported by the MIT-Google Program for Computing Innovation. It was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Computational Fabrication in November.

The Mexico City Initiative at MIT, led by the Institute’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU), has conceived and modeled an impressive array of solutions for challenges facing urban areas in Mexico and beyond. Faculty and students have designed the repurposing of a vintage roller coaster as a public meeting space, modeled strategies to decarbonize a municipal neighborhood, and proposed plans to convert nearly 990 acres of what was once Latin America’s largest landfill into a model of ecological restoration and clean energy production. The initiative has also spawned a sustainable construction startup that’s contributing to local economies in both Mexico and the United States.

When asked what’s most impactful about their work, however, those leading and collaborating with the LCAU’s Mexico City Initiative point to something else: the cross-border human connections they say are essential to continuing the ideation, development, and implementation of projects designed for Mexico City, but likely to be scalable and beneficial in urban centers around the world.

“To really create change in cities, we need to build relationships, friendships, and new networks. And through building them together, we can go so much further,” says Sarah Williams, director of the LCAU, which leads the initiative in collaboration with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Mexico City government, and the engineering firm Mota-Engil Mexico.

“I think one of the big things we’re proud of is there have been a lot of personal connections created between MIT and UNAM, and I think research collaboration will result from these connections,” says Onésimo Flores PhD ’13, director general of Mota-Engil Mexico’s transportation mobility division. “I think what we have contributed to building is deepening collaboration.”   

UNAM associate professor of architecture Elena Tudela agrees, noting that “beyond the projects themselves, we have developed a genuine friendship that I hope will continue long after this specific collaboration ends.”

“What I personally value most from these years of collaboration on Mexico City’s energy transition is the set of relationships we have built — with researchers, professors and especially the team at the LCAU,” says Tudela, an initiative collaborator. “For local students, the impact has been even more profound. It built bonds that transcend the workshop’s objectives, contributing to a deeper understanding of design as a collaborative, multidisciplinary practice.”

Williams credits Flores with helping to obtain Mota-Engil’s crucial financial support for the LCAU’s Mexico City Initiative. An MIT alumnus who earned his PhD in urban studies and planning in 2013 with Mota-Engil scholarship aid, Flores says the company’s support is meant to accomplish three goals: connect Mexican researchers with MIT, get Mexican students involved in MIT programs, and stimulate interest in projects relevant to cities like Mexico City among MIT faculty.   

“If you can find urban solutions for a city as complex as Mexico City, you can probably figure it out for any city in the world, particularly in the Global South,” he says.

Over the past three years, faculty and students from MIT and UNAM have worked on projects centered on energy transition. Project teams, collaborators, interested local officials, business leaders, and others gathered for a recent symposium showcasing the progress made on the Mexico City Initiative’s projects so far.

Held in Mexico City last fall and featuring presentations by several MIT faculty, the “Energy Transitions” symposium was hosted by the LCAU, UNAM, and Mota-Engil Mexico. Its purpose “was to make sure the research effort that was done together was presented to the public and private sectors — groups that might be able to take the research to the next level,” says Williams, an MIT associate professor of technology and urban planning.

“The lecture series was exciting because we saw an interest in extending all the projects. I also think the conversations and ideas that were had in the room spark the kind of civic debate needed to transform our cities,” Williams says.

Established in 2013, the LCAU’s work cuts across diverse research fields to create innovation in cities.

“There’s not one field that can transform our future cities — innovation happens when we cross disciplines,” says Williams, who became LCAU director four years ago and has since focused the center’s mission on building and maintaining long-term relationships with cities through “City Initiatives.”

Other City Initiatives have included collaborations in Boston, as well as Sydney, Australia; Beirut, Lebanon; Bogota, Colombia; and Pristina, Kosovo. Mexico City was among the first initiatives and is the LCAU’s longest-standing program. Activities have included several classes held between MIT and Mexico City, a public exhibition, a hackathon with MITdesignX, and numerous joint research projects.

Williams describes it as “a fantastic relationship,” which began with development of a strategic plan for a Mexico City Innovation Lab, leading to a decision to focus the initiative on themes playing out over the course of about two years. The current theme is Energy Intersections, which looks at the role design plays in transitioning to cleaner energy infrastructure. 

“This came from the group seeing that Mexico wanted to be a player in the global manufacturing marketplace and one of the barriers was how heavily polluted their energy infrastructure was,” Willliams says.

“The LCAU was founded for this idea that the work and research that we do about cities should be experimental, but also framed within contemporary policies and politics,” she says, adding that the team had considered other possible themes — from water and emergency planning to housing — but “as we started to think about energy, it just became so clearly important.”

Attracting about 70 attendees from Mexico City’s academic, government, and private sectors, the symposium was convened to enable MIT and UNAM researchers to share findings and discuss paths forward for several projects. Featured projects included:

• Redesigning Vallejo-I — aimed at transforming Mexico City’s Vallejo Industrial Zone into a revitalized hub for industry, transportation and housing;
• Decarbonize and Revitalize: Urban Regeneration for Mexico City’s Neighborhoods — which envisions ways for energy, equity, and design to regenerate Mexico City neighborhoods, using the Daniel Garza neighborhood as a model; and
• Bordo Poniente: Territories of Industrial and Ecological Metabolism — which presents strategies for reinventing what was once the world’s third-largest solid waste landfill (Bordo Poniente).

Leading the Bordo Poniente panel was project leader Eran Ben-Joseph, professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at MIT. Developed with UNAM and Mota-Engil partners, the project involved 12 MIT School of Architecture and Planning graduate students working across disciplines to address four integrated objectives: converting waste into public value, advancing energy transition (through methane/leachate capture), promoting equity and environmental justice for neighboring communities, and generating actionable policy recommendations, Ben-Joseph says.

“This collaborative effort exemplifies how international courses can combine rigorous fieldwork, interdisciplinary expertise, and community engagement to reimagine a toxic site as a model of urban regeneration and ecological repair,” he says, adding that the project “reflects MIT’s commitments to climate action, urban innovation, and applied systems thinking.” With over 100,000 landfills worldwide, he says, “a replicable ‘Bordo Model’ positions MIT as a global leader in transformation of waste landscapes into energy, ecological, and civic assets.”

In a similar vein, the Vallejo project reimagines urban industrial blocks as engines of clean energy generation, water resilience, and sustainable mobility. Led by MIT Department of Architecture Lecturer Roi Salgueiro Barrio and moderated by UNAM associate professor of architecture and project collaborator Daniel Daou, the symposium’s Redesigning Vallejo panel discussed how the project establishes an actionable framework for energy and industrial transition that can inspire and guide the revival of other industrial areas.

Finally, MIT professor of architecture and urbanism and project leader Rafi Segal presented the team’s Daniel Garza neighborhood case study, which highlighted two replicable urban planning and community clean energy project designs resulting from work by MIT and UNAM researchers.

“The most impactful aspect of ‘Decarbonize and Revitalize’ is its ability to merge energy transition with urban regeneration at the neighborhood scale. The project does not fit neatly into a single disciplinary category; it operates at the intersection of energy, design, and social infrastructure,” says Daniela Martinez Chapa, a former MIT student and an architect and urban designer who served as research assistant on the MIT team. “The project exemplifies MIT’s commitment to collaborative, context-specific innovation,” she adds.

Like others involved with the Mexico City Initiative, UNAM’s Tudela pointed out how working across disciplines, institutions, and borders has benefited both UNAM and MIT.

“MIT brings cutting-edge tools and methodologies in fields such as energy and urban data science, while UNAM contributes deep local expertise, strong social perspectives, and long-standing engagement with communities,” Tudela says. “This combination has produced highly creative, context-sensitive outcomes.”

As for next steps, Williams is hopeful that conversations started at this fall’s symposium might push the team’s research into the local limelight, helping them go from research and strategies to on-the-ground reality. She pointed to the success of an earlier LCAU Mexico City project as an example of what can happen when the right ideas and stakeholders coalesce.

For the 2022 Mextropoli Architecture and City Festival in Mexico City, an MIT team presented “Sueños con Fiber/Timber, Earth/Concrete.”

“As part of that project, we took a decommissioned roller coaster and reused it as a public forum space. And so that was talking about reuse of wood and making sure that building materials are reused in unique ways,” Williams says.

Adjacent to the repurposed roller coaster, Caitlin Mueller, an associate professor in MIT’s departments of Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering, built a structure made of 3D printed bricks that capture the traditional style of Mexican construction, but with a fraction of the carbon footprint. Mueller has since taken the Sueños project further, co-founding a design and technology company (Forma Systems) focused on expanding access to high-quality, low-carbon affordable housing and building systems by reimagining widely available materials such as concrete and earth.

“Caitlin’s project with the bricks is just such a good example of what the Cities Initiative can do. We seeded collaborative research, and now there’s a startup based off the idea, and they are continuing to do the work,” Williams says. “I think that’s the idea — we help to fund research that combines deep local knowledge and MIT’s innovation environment to help inspire new ideas and technologies for cities.

“I would hope these new projects just presented in Mexico would have a similar trajectory,” she says. “The future is open.”

Researchers have demonstrated remotely controlling a wheelchair over Bluetooth. CISA has issued an advisory.

CISA said the WHILL wheelchairs did not enforce authentication for Bluetooth connections, allowing an attacker who is in Bluetooth range of the targeted device to pair with it. The attacker could then control the wheelchair’s movements, override speed restrictions, and manipulate configuration profiles, all without requiring credentials or user interaction.

This blog also appears in our Age Verification Resource Hub: our one-stop shop for users seeking to understand what age-gating laws actually do, what’s at stake, how to protect yourself, and why EFF opposes all forms of age verification mandates. Head to EFF.org/Age to explore our resources and join us in the fight for a free, open, private, and yes—safe—internet.

EFF is against age gating and age verification mandates, and we hope we’ll win in getting existing ones overturned and new ones prevented. But mandates are already in effect, and every day many people are asked to verify their age across the web, despite prominent cases of sensitive data getting leaked in the process.

At some point, you may have been faced with the decision yourself: should I continue to use this service if I have to verify my age? And if so, how can I do that with the least risk to my personal information? This is our guide to navigating those decisions, with information on what questions to ask about the age verification options you’re presented with, and answers to those questions for some of the top most popular social media sites. Even though there’s no way to implement mandated age gates in a way that fully protects speech and privacy rights, our goal here is to help you minimize the infringement of your rights as you manage this awful situation.

Follow the Data

Since we know that leaks happen despite the best efforts of software engineers, we generally recommend submitting the absolute least amount of data possible. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be possible for everyone. Even facial age estimation solutions where pictures of your face never leave your device, offering some protection against data leakage, are not a good option for all users: facial age estimation works less well for people of color, trans and nonbinary people, and people with disabilities. There are some systems that use fancy cryptography so that a digital ID saved to your device won’t tell the website anything more than if you meet the age requirement, but access to that digital ID isn’t available to everyone or for all platforms. You may also not want to register for a digital ID and save it to your phone, if you don’t want to take the chance of all the information on it being exposed upon request of an over-zealous verifier, or you simply don’t want to be a part of a digital ID system

If you’re given the option of selecting a verification method and are deciding which to use, we recommend considering the following questions for each process allowed by each vendor:

• Data: What info does each method require?
• Access: Who can see the data during the course of the verification process?
• Retention: Who will hold onto that data after the verification process, and for how long?
• Audits: How sure are we that the stated claims will happen in practice? For example, are there external audits confirming that data is not accidentally leaked to another site along the way? Ideally these will be in-depth, security-focused audits by specialized auditors like NCC Group or Trail of Bits, instead of audits that merely certify adherence to standards. 
• Visibility: Who will be aware that you’re attempting to verify your age, and will they know which platform you’re trying to verify for?

We attempt to provide answers to these questions below. To begin, there are two major factors to consider when answering these questions: the tools each platform uses, and the overall system those tools are part of.

In general, most platforms offer age estimation options like face scans as a first line of age assurance. These vary in intrusiveness, but their main problem is inaccuracy, particularly for marginalized users. Third-party age verification vendors Private ID and k-ID offer on-device facial age estimation, but another common vendor, Yoti, sends the image to their servers during age checks by some of the biggest platforms. This risks leaking the images themselves, and also the fact that you’re using that particular website, to the third party. 

Then, there’s the document-based verification services, which require you to submit a hard identifier like a government-issued ID. This method thus requires you to prove both your age and your identity. A platform can do this in-house through a designated dataflow, or by sending that data to a third party. We’ve already seen examples of how this can fail. For example, Discord routed users' ID data through its general customer service workflow so that a third-party vendor could perform manual review of verification appeals. No one involved ever deleted users' data, so when the system was breached, Discord had to apologize for the catastrophic disclosure of nearly 70,000 photos of users' ID documents. Overly long retention periods expose documents to risk of breaches and historical data requests. Some document verifiers have retention periods that are needlessly long. This is the case with Incode, which provides ID verification for Tiktok. Incode holds onto images forever by default, though TikTok should automatically start the deletion process on your behalf.

Some platforms offer alternatives, like proving that you own a credit card, or asking for your email to check if it appears in databases associated with adulthood (like home mortgage databases). These tend to involve less risk when it comes to the sensitivity of the data itself, especially since credit cards can be replaced, but in general still undermine anonymity and pseudonymity and pose a risk of tracking your online activity. We’d prefer to see more assurances across the board about how information is handled.

Each site offers users a menu of age assurance options to choose from. We’ve chosen to present these options in the rough order that we expect most people to prefer. Jump directly to a platform to learn more about its age checks:

• Meta – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads
• Google – Gmail, YouTube
• TikTok
• Everywhere Else

Meta – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads Inferred Age

If Meta can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification screen. Meta, which runs Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, first tries to use information you’ve posted to guess your age, like looking at “Happy birthday!” messages. It’s a creepy reminder that they already have quite a lot of information about you.

If Meta cannot guess your age, or if Meta infers you're too young, it will next ask you to verify your age using either facial age estimation, or by uploading your photo ID. 

Face Scan

If you choose to use facial age estimation, you’ll be sent to Yoti, a third-party verification service. Your photo will be uploaded to their servers during this process. Yoti claims that “as soon as an age has been estimated, the facial image is immediately and permanently deleted.” Though it’s not as good as not having that data in the first place, Yoti’s security measures include a bug bounty program and annual penetration testing. Researchers from Mint Secure found that Yoti’s app and website are filled with trackers, so the fact that you’re verifying your age could be not only shared to Yoti, but leaked to third-party data brokers as well. 

You may not want to use this option if you’re worried about third parties potentially being able to know you’re trying to verify your age with Meta. You also might not want to use this if you’re worried about a current picture of your face accidentally leaking—for example, if elements in the background of your selfie might reveal your current location. On the other hand, if you consider a selfie to be less sensitive than a photograph of your ID, this option might be better. If you do choose (or are forced to) use the face check system, be sure to snap your selfie without anything you'd be concerned with identifying your location or embarrassing you in the background in case the image leaks.

Upload ID

If Yoti’s age estimation decides your face looks too young, or if you opt out of facial age estimation, your next recourse is to send Meta a photo of your ID. Meta sends that photo to Yoti to verify the ID. Meta says it will hold onto that ID image for 30 days, then delete it. Meanwhile, Yoti claims it will delete the image immediately after verification. Of course, bugs and process oversights exist, such as accidentally replicating information in logs or support queues, but at least they have stated processes. Your ID contains sensitive information such as your full legal name and home address. Using this option not only runs the (hopefully small, but never nonexistent) risk of that data getting leaked through errors or hacking, but it also lets Meta see the information needed to tie your profile to your identity—which you may not want. If you don’t want Meta to know your name and where you live, or rely on both Meta and Yoti to keep to their deletion promises, this option may not be right for you.

Google – Gmail, YouTube  Inferred Age

If Google can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification screen. Your Google account is typically connected to your YouTube account, so if (like mine) your YouTube account is old enough to vote, you may not need to verify your Google account at all. Google first uses information it already knows to try to guess your age, like how long you’ve had the account and your YouTube viewing habits. It’s yet another creepy reminder of how much information these corporations have on you, but at least in this case they aren’t likely to ask for even more identifying data.

If Google cannot guess your age, or decides you're too young, Google will next ask you to verify your age. You’ll be given a variety of options for how to do so, with availability that will depend on your location and your age.

Google’s methods to assure your age include ID verification, facial age estimation, verification by proxy, and digital ID. To prove you’re over 18, you may be able to use facial age estimation, give Google your credit card information, or tell a third-party provider your email address.

Face Scan

If you choose to use facial age estimation, you’ll be sent to a website run by Private ID, a third-party verification service. The website will load Private ID’s verifier within the page—this means that your selfie will be checked without any images leaving your device. If the system decides you’re over 18, it will let Google know that, and only that. Of course, no technology is perfect—should Private ID be mandated to target you specifically, there’s nothing to stop it from sending down code that does in fact upload your image, and you probably won’t notice. But unless your threat model includes being specifically targeted by a state actor or Private ID, that’s unlikely to be something you need to worry about. For most people, no one else will see your image during this process. Private ID will, however, be told that your device is trying to verify your age with Google and Google will still find out if Private ID thinks that you’re under 18.

If Private ID’s age estimation decides your face looks too young, you may next be able to decide if you’d rather let Google verify your age by giving it your credit card information, photo ID, or digital ID, or by letting Google send your email address to a third-party verifier.

Email Usage

If you choose to provide your email address, Google sends it on to a company called VerifyMy. VerifyMy will use your email address to see if you’ve done things like get a mortgage or paid for utilities using that email address. If you use Gmail as your email provider, this may be a privacy-protective option with respect to Google, as Google will then already know the email address associated with the account. But it does tell VerifyMy and its third-party partners that the person behind this email address is looking to verify their age, which you may not want them to know. VerifyMy uses “proprietary algorithms and external data sources” that involve sending your email address to “trusted third parties, such as data aggregators.” It claims to “ensure that such third parties are contractually bound to meet these requirements,” but you’ll have to trust it on that one—we haven’t seen any mention of who those parties are, so you’ll have no way to check up on their practices and security. On the bright side, VerifyMy and its partners do claim to delete your information as soon as the check is completed.

Credit Card Verification

If you choose to let Google use your credit card information, you’ll be asked to set up a Google Payments account. Note that debit cards won’t be accepted, since it’s much easier for many debit cards to be issued to people under 18. Google will then charge a small amount to the card, and refund it once it goes through. If you choose this method, you’ll have to tell Google your credit card info, but the fact that it’s done through Google Payments (their regular card-processing system) means that at least your credit card information won’t be sitting around in some unsecured system. Even if your credit card information happens to accidentally be leaked, this is a relatively low-risk option, since credit cards come with solid fraud protection. If your credit card info gets leaked, you should easily be able to dispute fraudulent charges and replace the card.

Digital ID

If the option is available to you, you may be able to use your digital ID to verify your age with Google. In some regions, you’ll be given the option to use your digital ID. In some cases, it’s possible to only reveal your age information when you use a digital ID. If you’re given that choice, it can be a good privacy-preserving option. Depending on the implementation, there’s a chance that the verification step will “phone home” to the ID provider (usually a government) to let them know the service asked for your age. It’s a complicated and varied topic that you can learn more about by visiting EFF’s page on digital identity.

Upload ID

Should none of these options work for you, your final recourse is to send Google a photo of your ID. Here, you’ll be asked to take a photo of an acceptable ID and send it to Google. Though the help page only states that your ID “will be stored securely,” the verification process page says ID “will be deleted after your date of birth is successfully verified.” Acceptable IDs vary by country, but are generally government-issued photo IDs. We like that it’s deleted immediately, though we have questions about what Google means when it says your ID will be used to “improve [its] verification services for Google products and protect against fraud and abuse.” No system is perfect, and we can only hope that Google schedules outside audits regularly.

TikTok Inferred Age

If TikTok can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification notification. TikTok first tries to use information you’ve posted to estimate your age, looking through your videos and photos to analyze your face and listen to your voice. By uploading any videos, TikTok believes you’ve given it consent to try to guess how old you look and sound.

If TikTok decides you’re too young, appeal to revoke their age decision before the deadline passes. If TikTok cannot guess your age, or decides you're too young, it will automatically revoke your access based on age—including either restricting features or deleting your account. To get your access and account back, you’ll have a limited amount of time to verify your age. As soon as you see the notification that your account is restricted, you’ll want to act fast because in some places you’ll have as little as 23 days before the deadline passes.

When you get that notification, you’re given various options to verify your age based on your location.

Face Scan

If you’re given the option to use facial age estimation, you’ll be sent to Yoti, a third-party verification service. Your photo will be uploaded to their servers during this process. Yoti claims that “as soon as an age has been estimated, the facial image is immediately and permanently deleted.” Though it’s not as good as not having that data in the first place, Yoti’s security measures include a bug bounty program and annual penetration testing. However, researchers from Mint Secure found that Yoti’s app and website are filled with trackers, so the fact that you’re verifying your age could be leaked not only to Yoti, but to third-party data brokers as well.

You may not want to use this option if you’re worried about third parties potentially being able to know you’re trying to verify your age with TikTok. You also might not want to use this if you’re worried about a current picture of your face accidentally leaking—for example, if elements in the background of your selfie might reveal your current location. On the other hand, if you consider a selfie to be less sensitive than a photograph of your ID or your credit card information, this option might be better. If you do choose (or are forced to) use the face check system, be sure to snap your selfie without anything you'd be concerned with identifying your location or embarrassing you in the background in case the image leaks.

Credit Card Verification

If you have a credit card in your name, TikTok will accept that as proof that you’re over 18. Note that debit cards won’t be accepted, since it’s much easier for many debit cards to be issued to people under 18. TikTok will charge a small amount to the credit card, and refund it once it goes through. It’s unclear if this goes through their regular payment process, or if your credit card information will be sent through and stored in a separate, less secure system. Luckily, these days credit cards come with solid fraud protection, so if your credit card gets leaked, you should easily be able to dispute fraudulent charges and replace the card. That said, we’d rather TikTok provide assurances that the information will be processed securely.

Credit Card Verification of a Parent or Guardian

Sometimes, if you’re between 13 and 17, you’ll be given the option to let your parent or guardian confirm your age. You’ll tell TikTok their email address, and TikTok will send your parent or guardian an email asking them (a) to confirm your date of birth, and (b) to verify their own age by proving that they own a valid credit card. This option doesn’t always seem to be offered, and in the one case we could find, it’s possible that TikTok never followed up with the parent. So it’s unclear how or if TikTok verifies that the adult whose email you provide is your parent or guardian. If you want to use credit card verification but you’re not old enough to have a credit card, and you’re ok with letting an adult know you use TikTok, this option may be reasonable to try.

Photo with a Random Adult?

Bizarrely, if you’re between 13 and 17, TikTok claims to offer the option to take a photo with literally any random adult to confirm your age. Its help page says that any trusted adult over 25 can be chosen, as long as they’re holding a piece of paper with the code on it that TikTok provides. It also mentions that a third-party provider is used here, but doesn’t say which one. We haven’t found any evidence of this verification method being offered. Please do let us know if you’ve used this method to verify your age on TikTok!

Photo ID and Face Comparison

If you aren’t offered or have failed the other options, you’ll have to verify your age by submitting a copy of your ID and matching photo of your face. You’ll be sent to Incode, a third-party verification service. In a disappointing failure to meet the industry standard, Incode itself doesn’t automatically delete the data you give it once the process is complete, but TikTok does claim to “start the process to delete the information you submitted,” which should include telling Incode to delete your data once the process is done. If you want to be sure, you can ask Incode to delete that data yourself. Incode tells TikTok that you met the age threshold without providing your exact date of birth, but then TikTok wants to know the exact date anyway, so it’ll ask for your date of birth even after your age has been verified.

TikTok itself might not see your actual ID depending on its implementation choices, but Incode will. Your ID contains sensitive information such as your full legal name and home address. Using this option not only runs the (hopefully small, but never nonexistent) risk of that data getting accidentally leaked through errors or hacking. If you don’t want TikTok or Incode to know your name, what you look like, and where you live—or if you don't want to rely on both TikTok and Incode to keep to their deletion promises—then this option may not be right for you.

Everywhere Else

We’ve covered the major providers here, but age verification is unfortunately being required of many other services that you might use as well. While the providers and processes may vary, the same general principles will apply. If you’re trying to choose what information to provide to continue to use a service, consider the “follow the data” questions mentioned above, and try to find out how the company will store and process the data you give it. The less sensitive information, the fewer people have access to it, and the more quickly it will be deleted, the better. You may even come to recognize popular names in the age verification industry: Spotify and OnlyFans use Yoti (just like Meta and Tiktok), Quora and Discord use k-ID, and so on. 

Unfortunately, it should be clear by now that none of the age verification options are perfect in terms of protecting information, providing access to everyone, and safely handling sensitive data. That’s just one of the reasons that EFF is against age-gating mandates, and is working to stop and overturn them across the United States and around the world.

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Help protect digital privacy & free speech for everyone.

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

• I’m speaking at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on January 27, 2026, at 1:30 PM ET.
• I’m speaking at the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on January 29, 2026, at 4:00 PM ET.
• I’m speaking and signing books at the Chicago Public Library in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on February 5, 2026, at 6:00 PM CT.
• I’m speaking at Capricon 46 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The convention runs February 5-8, 2026. My speaking time is TBD...

Michael J. Moody, who has served as Institute auditor since 2014, will retire from MIT in October, following a career in internal and external audit spanning 40 years.

Executive Vice President and Treasurer Glen Shor announced the news today in a letter to MIT’s Academic Council.

“I have greatly appreciated Mike’s rigorous and collaborative approach to auditing and advising on the Institute’s policies and processes,” Shor wrote. “He has helped MIT accomplish far-reaching ambitions while adhering to best practices in administering programs and services.”

As Institute auditor, Moody oversees a division that conducts financial, operational, compliance, and technology reviews across MIT. He leads a team of internal auditors that serve as trusted advisors to administrative leadership and members of the MIT Corporation, assessing processes and making recommendations to control risks, improve processes, and enhance decision-making.

The MIT Audit Division maintains a dual reporting structure to ensure its independence. Moody and his team work for the MIT Corporation Risk and Audit Committee but receive administrative support from the MIT Office of the Executive Vice President and Treasurer.

“Mike is highly principled and rigorous with detail, earning our committee’s trust,” says Pat Callahan, chair of the Risk and Audit Committee. “The committee runs like clockwork because of Mike’s dedication and skill.”

Moody has guided the Audit Division through a transformative period, spearheading several impactful initiatives throughout his tenure. He advanced the approval of the first-ever Audit Division Charter to codify the unit’s independence and objectivity and to articulate its mandates for accountability and oversight, and he implemented a new process to distribute audit reports to all senior administrative officers as a best practice. He also initiated the Institute’s inaugural external quality assurance review, for which MIT received the highest rating. Moody has continued the practice of externally auditing the division.

Having a particular interest in leveraging analytics and data to improve workflows and inform assessments, Moody added a data analyst to his team in 2016. The team also sponsors the cross-Institute Data Analysts and Data Scientists (DADS) group, which seeks to foster collaboration while advancing analytics and data practices at an Institute level.

More recently, Moody helped establish the MIT AI Cohort to advance artificial intelligence solutions across the Institute while minimizing associated risks. The group, launched in November 2025, includes representatives from MIT Sloan School of Management, the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, the School of Engineering, MIT Libraries, the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Division of Graduate and Undergraduate Education, and MIT Health, among others.

A key aspect of Moody's work — and one that has been especially meaningful to him — is helping the MIT community understand the Audit Division's mission and role in furthering the Institute’s positive impact. To facilitate this, he instilled in his team a set of core values that emphasizes professionalism, objectivity, pragmatism, openness, and willingness to listen, and has presented it as a model for peer institutions. He has in this vein focused on building relationships with the community to identify the right opportunities for improvement in MIT’s operations and ensure that the Audit Division’s feedback is constructively delivered and received.

“Mike has been an invaluable partner,” says Suzy Nelson, MIT vice chancellor for student life. “Over the years, his collaborative and knowledgeable approach has helped us improve so many areas — from student organization event management to our business practices to enhancing our student support services. Mike has listened carefully to students’ needs and offered guidance aligned with the goals of the program and student safety.”

Before joining MIT, Moody served in audit and compliance roles at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the state of Illinois. At the public accounting firm Coopers and Lybrand (now Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP), he managed and performed information technology audits and served as a financial and technology consultant for clients in a variety of industries. Moody has also held numerous volunteer and elected leadership positions in international, national, and local professional audit associations. He holds certified internal auditor and certified information systems auditor designations, along with a certification in risk management assurance.

“In reflecting on my time here, I’m most proud of assembling a team that has made positive changes to how MIT operates,” says Moody. “It’s been very rewarding having leaders, staff, and researchers reach out for advice and assistance. It's a testament to the strong relationships we've built across the Institute.”

Shor and Callahan will soon formally launch a search for Institute auditor, and expect to identify Moody’s successor during the fall 2026 semester.

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the clumping of proteins called Tau, which form tangled fibrils in the brain. The more severe the clumping, the more advanced the disease is.

The Tau protein, which has also been linked to many other neurodegenerative diseases, is unstructured in its normal state, but in the pathological state it consists of a well-ordered rigid core surrounded by floppy segments. These disordered segments form a “fuzzy coat” that helps determine how Tau interacts with other molecules.

MIT chemists have now shown, for the first time, they can use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to decipher the structure of this fuzzy coat. They hope their findings will aid efforts to develop drugs that interfere with Tau buildup in the brain.

“If you want to disaggregate these Tau fibrils with small-molecule drugs, then these drugs have to penetrate this fuzzy coat,” says Mei Hong, an MIT professor of chemistry and the senior author of the new study. “That would be an important future endeavor.”

MIT graduate student Jia Yi Zhang is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Former MIT postdoc Aurelio Dregni is also an author of the paper.

Analyzing the fuzzy coat

In a healthy brain, Tau proteins help to stabilize microtubules, which give cells their structure. However, when Tau proteins become misfolded or otherwise altered, they form clumps that contribute to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia.

Determining the structure of the Tau tangles has been difficult because so much of the protein — about 80 percent — is found in the fuzzy coat, which tends to be highly disordered.

This fuzzy coat surrounds a rigid inner core that is made from folded protein strands known as beta sheets. Hong and her colleagues have previously analyzed the structure of the core in a particular Tau fibril using NMR, which can reveal the structures of molecules by measuring the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei within the molecules.

Until now, most researchers had overlooked Tau’s fuzzy coat and focused on the rigid core of the fibrils because those disordered segments change their structures so often that standard structure characterization techniques such as cryoelectron microscopy and X-ray crystallography can’t capture them.

However, in the new study, the researchers developed NMR techniques that allowed them to study the entire Tau protein. In one experiment, they were able to magnetize protons within the most rigid amino acids, then measure how long it took for the magnetization to be transferred to the mobile amino acids. This allowed them to track the magnetization as it traveled from rigid regions to floppy segments, and vice versa.

Using this approach, the researchers could estimate the proximity between the rigid and mobile segments. They complemented this experiment by measuring the different degrees of movement of the amino acids in the fuzzy coat.

“We have now developed an NMR-based technology to examine the fuzzy coat of a full-length Tau fibril, allowing us to capture both the dynamic regions and the rigid core,” Hong says.

Protein dynamics

For this particular fibril, the researchers showed that the overall structure of the Tau protein, which contains about 10 different domains, somewhat resembles a burrito, with several layers of the fuzzy coat wrapped around the rigid core.

Based on their measurements of protein dynamics, the researchers found that these segments fell into three categories. The rigid core of the fibril was surrounded by protein regions with intermediate mobility, whereas the most dynamic segments were found in the outermost layer.

The most dynamic segments of the fuzzy coat are rich in the amino acid proline. In the protein sequence, these prolines are near the amino acids that form the rigid core, and were previously thought to be partially immobilized. Instead, they are highly mobile, indicating that these positively charged proline-rich regions are repelled by the positive charges of the amino acids that form the rigid core.

This structural model gives insight into how Tau proteins form tangles in the brain, Hong says. Similar to how prions trigger healthy proteins to misfold in the brain, it is believed that misfolded Tau proteins latch onto normal Tau proteins and act as a template that induces them to adopt the abnormal structure.

In principle, these normal Tau proteins could add to the ends of existing short filaments or pile onto the sides. The fact that the fuzzy coat wraps around the rigid core indicates that normal Tau proteins more likely add onto the ends of the filaments to generate longer fibrils.

The researchers now plan to explore whether they can stimulate normal Tau proteins to assemble into the type of fibrils seen in Alzheimer’s disease, using misfolded Tau proteins from Alzheimer’s patients as a template.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The draft rules come as California regulators attempt to limit the costs of their climate policies while also continuing to cut emissions.

Donald Zepeda is terrified about the impacts of climate change, but he might be done risking arrest to get the public’s attention.

State legislators are pushing legislation to bar climate change lawsuits against the oil and gas industry.

The state insurer of last resort now has more than $700 billion in potential claims liability.

The world will shoot past the Paris climate agreement’s lower target by 2030, data shows.

Their requests include fewer grant programs and more flexibility on how they can spend federal dollars.

The 8.4 gigawatts contracted is enough to power 12 million homes.

The World Benchmarking Alliance analyzed about 1,600 companies worldwide and found the median share of spending currently devoted to low-carbon projects is just 7 percent.

The government is seeking to tap emissions-reduction potential across the energy, agriculture, forestry, waste and industrial sectors.

With the Earth warming at a record rate, the list of locales that could reliably host a Winter Games will shrink substantially in the coming years, according to researchers.

Witnesses said the landslide followed several hours of intense rainfall and has cut off the main road between the major city of Goma and the provincial capital, Walikale.

As a graduate student, Leslie Tilley spent years studying and practicing the music of Bali, Indonesia, including a traditional technique in which two Balinese drummers play intricately interlocking rhythms while simultaneously improvising. It was beautiful and compelling music, which Tilley heard an unexpected insight about one day.

“The higher drum is the bus driver, and the lower drum is the person who puts the bags on the top of the bus,” a Balinese musician told Tilley.

Today, Tilley is an MIT faculty member who works as both an ethnomusicologist, studying music in its cultural settings, and a music theorist, analyzing its formal principles. The tools of music theory have long been applied to, say, Bach, and rather less often to Balinese drumming. But one of Tilley’s interests is building music theory across boundaries. As she recognized, the drummer’s bus driver analogy is a piece of theory. 

“That doesn’t feel like the music theory I had learned, but that is 100 percent music theory,” Tilley said. “What is the relationship between the drummers? The higher drum has to stick to a smaller subset of rhythms so that the lower drum has more freedom to improvise around. Putting it that way is just a different music-theoretical language.”

Tilley’s anecdote touches on many aspects of her career: Her work ranges widely, while linking theory, practice, and learning. Her studies in Bali became the basis for an award-winning book, which uses Balinese music as a case study for a more generalized framework about collective improvisation, one that can apply to any type of music.

Currently, Tilley is engaged in another major project, supported by a multiyear, $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant, to develop a reimagined music theory curriculum. That project aims to produce an alternative four-semester open access music theory curriculum with a broader scope than many existing course materials, to be accompanied by a new audio-visual textbook. The effort includes a major conference later this year that Tilley is organizing, and is designed as a collaborative project; she will work with other scholars on the curriculum and textbook, with 2028 as a completion date.

If that weren’t enough, Tilley is also working on a new book about the phenomenon of cover songs in modern pop music, from the 1950s onward. Here too, Tilley is combining careful cultural analysis of select popular artists and their work, along with a formal examination of the musical choices they have made while developing cover versions of songs.

All told, understanding how music works within a culture, while understanding the inner workings of music, can deliver us new insights — about music, performers, and audiences.

“What I am focused on fundamentally is how musicians take a musical thing and make something new out of it,” Tilley says. “And then how listeners react to that thing. What is happening here musically? And can that explain the human reaction to it, which is messy and subjective?”

Across all these projects, Tilley has been a consistently innovative scholar who reshapes existing genres of work. For her research and teaching, Tilley has received tenure and is now an associate professor in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts Program.

The joy of collective improv

Both of Tilley’s parents were musicians, but “they never had any intention for their kids to go into music,” says Tilley, a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Growing up, she studied piano, violin, and French horn for years; played in a symphony orchestra, brass band, and concert bands; sang in choirs; and performed in musicals. Ultimately she realized she could make a career out of music as well. 

“In 12th grade I suddenly realized, music is what I do. Music is who I am. Music is what I love,” Tilley says. Back then, she pictured herself being an opera singer. Subsequently, as she recalls, “Somewhere along the way, I steered myself into music scholarship.”

Tilley received her bachelor of music degree from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, and then conducted her graduate studies in music at the University of British Columbia, where she earned an MA and PhD. It was in graduate school that Tilley began studying the music of Bali — on campus and during extended periods of field research.

Studying Balinese music was “mildly accidental,” Tilley says, calling it “a little bit of happy happenstance. Encountering these musical traditions exploded the way I thought about music and ways of understanding the interactions of musicians.”

In her research, Tilley looked intensively at two distinct improvised Balinese musical practices: the four-person melodic gong technique “reyong norot” and the two-person drumming practice “kendang arja.” Both are featured in her 2019 book, “Making It Up Together: The Art of Collective Improvisation in Balinese Music and Beyond.” Published by the University of Chicago Press, it won the 2022 Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory.

Grounded in empirical evidence, the book proposes a novel, universal framework for understanding the components of collective improvisation. That includes both the more strictly musical aspects of improvisation — how much flexibility musicians give themselves to improvise, for instance — as well as the forms of interaction musicians have with their co-performers.

“My book is about collective improvisation and what it means,” Tilley says. “What is the give and take of that process, and how can we analyze that? There are lots of scholars who have discussed collective improvisation as it exists in jazz. The delicious joy of collective improvisation is something anybody who improvises in a musical group will talk about. My book looks at examples, especially the case studies I have from Bali, and then creates bigger analytical frameworks, so there can finally be an umbrella way of looking at this phenomenon across music cultures and practices.”

Despite her years of immersing herself in the music, and playing it, Tilley says, “I am a beginner in comparison to the drummers I studied with, who have been playing forever and played with other masters their whole lives, and were generous enough to allow me to learn from them.” Still, she thinks the experience of playing music while studying it is indispensable.

“Ethnomusicology is a field that takes a bit from other fields,” Tilley notes. “The idea of participant observation, we borrow that from anthropology, and the idea of close musical analysis is from musicology or music theory. It’s an in-between way of thinking about music where I get to both participate and observe. But also I’m a music analysis nerd: What’s happening in the notes? Looking at music note-by-note, but from a place of physical embodiment, provides a better understanding than if I had just looked at the notes.”

Expanding instruction

At present, Tilley is devoting significant effort to her music-theory curriculum work, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation as a three-year effort. The upcoming summer conference she is organizing, also supported by the Mellon Foundation, will be a key part of the project, allowing a wide range of scholars to air perspectives about reimagining music theory studies in the 21st century.

Substantively, the idea is to broaden the scope of music theory instruction. Often, Tilley says, “music theory is learning how to understand the musical structures that are essentially between Bach and early Beethoven, that kind of narrow range of a couple hundred years, really amazing musical systems with a very deep, written-down music theory. But that accepted canon leaves out so many other kinds of music and ways of knowing.” Instead, she adds, “If we were not beholden to any assumptions about what we should have in a music program, what skills would we want our students to walk away from four semesters of music theory with?”

About the conference, Tilley quips: “Sitting in a room and nerding out with a bunch of people who care deeply about a thing you care about, which in my case is music, music theory, and pedagogy, is possibly the coolest thing you can do with your time. Hopefully something wonderful comes out of it.”

As Tilley views it, her current book project on pop music cover songs stems from some of the same issues that have long animated her thinking: How do artists fashion their work out of existing knowledge?

“The project on cover songs is similar to the project on collective improvisation in Bali,” Tilley says, in the sense that when it comes to improvisation, “I have a bank of things I know, in my head and in my body about this musical practice, and within that context I can create something that is new and mine, based on something that exists already.”

She adds: “Cover songs to me are the same, but different. The same in that it’s a musical transformation, but different because a pop song doesn’t just have lyrics, melody, and chords, but the vocal quality, the arrangement, the brand of the performer, and so much more. What we think about in popular music isn’t just the song, it’s the person singing it, the social and political contexts, and the listener’s personal relationships to all those things, and they’re so wrapped up together we almost can’t disentangle them.”

As with her earlier work, Tilley is not just examining individual pieces of music, but building a larger analytical model in the process — one that factors in the formal musical changes artists make as well as the cultural components of the phenomenon, to understand why cover songs can produce strong and varying reactions among listeners.

In the process, Tilley has been presenting conference papers and invited talks on the topic for a number of years now. One case that interests Tilley is the singer-songwriter Tori Amos, whose many cover versions transform the viewpoint, music, and meaning of songs by artists from Eminem to Nirvana, and more. There may also be some Taylor Swift content in the next book, although with thousands and thousands of songs to choose from in the pop-rock era, there could be something for everyone — fitting Tilley’s ethos of studying music broadly, across time and space as it is created, recreated, and recreated again.

“This is why music is infinitely cool,” Tilley says. “It’s so malleable, and so open to interpretation.” 

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02518-4

A Europe-wide probabilistic assessment of coastal flood risk to road and rail infrastructure, at different levels of global warming, shows that each increment of warming amplifies flood damage. Smaller economies face the greatest relative economic impacts, and several countries will need to increase and potentially realign transport investments towards climate resilience.