Skip to main content
NOPE
Low reported severity

First-person forum account: a long-time Character.AI user who says they are an adult says the app's AI age verification, run through Persona, kept judging them a minor despite ID photos, answered more than five support tickets only with automated replies, and locked them out of their account

In a public post to r/CharacterAI at 21:47 UTC on 2 October 2026, a person who describes themselves as a veteran user of the Character.AI app says they returned about a month earlier to verify their age, and that the AI verification by Persona assumed they were a minor although they are not. They say they sent photos of their ID, tried desktop and different lighting, and kept getting an error message; that more than five support tickets asking for manual verification drew only replies from automated bots; and that the age verification system has now locked them out of their account. In a reply they say the system should identify people properly instead of "locking it out on permenent basis". A commenter says the same check called them underage. The account is uncorroborated, and Character.AI's and Persona's handling is described only by the poster.

AI system
Character.AI age verification
Character.AI
Occurred
2 Sept 2026 to 2 Oct 2026
Reported
2 October 2026
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Made a decision about the person
Reported harm
Other Material Harm
Whose AI use
An institution’s AI use
Setting
Everyday life · Privacy
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source
3 claims: 3 reported. 3 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Character.AI's age verification, which the poster says is an AI verification run through Persona, plus automated support replies to the poster's tickets

What Happened

The check. The poster says they had used the Character.AI app for a long time, left for a few months after its age verification system was introduced, and "came back a month ago to verify my age". They write that "the AI verification by Persona and the system is severely faulty" and assumed they were a minor, which they say they are not.

Attempts. They say they sent photos of their ID, tried verifying from a desktop, cleared the cache and adjusted lighting and position as others had advised, but the verification system kept sending an error message and remained "adamant on assuming me as a minor".

Support. The poster says they sent more than five support tickets asking for manual verification and received only replies "from their automated bots".

Lockout. They write that "now the age verification system has locked out from my account". In a reply they say that if the system is used it should identify people properly "instead of just making assumptions and locking it out on permenent basis".

Limits. Single uncorroborated account. The post's three screenshots show an "Unable to verify age" error over the app's profile, library and settings screens. The post does not say what the lockout covers, what age the system estimated, or what the poster's age is. Persona's role is the poster's description.

Reported harm

The poster says Character.AI's AI age verification through Persona wrongly judged them a minor, that support tickets drew only automated replies, and that the system locked them out of their account (first-person account, uncorroborated).

Outcome

Ongoing

The poster asks the subreddit's moderators or the developers to resolve the lockout. In replies, one commenter says the check also called them underage and that they moved to other apps; another suggests opening a new account with a false birth date. No response from Character.AI or Persona is reported.

What remains unknown

  • The exact dates of the verification attempts and the lockout; the post says the poster came back 'a month ago'.
  • What age the system estimated, the poster's actual age and what the lockout covers. The post's screenshots show the app's profile, library and settings screens still open beneath the age error; the post does not say whether they were taken before the lockout.
  • Whether Character.AI or Persona has reviewed the tickets.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The poster says Character.AI's age verification is an AI verification by Persona and that it repeatedly assumed they were a minor. The post's three screenshots show the app's "Unable to verify age" error with a prompt to contact support; they show no age estimate, no vendor name and no lockout notice. No company statement was published.

3 claims: 3 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The poster says they returned to Character.AI about a month before the post to verify their age and that the AI verification by Persona assumed they were a minor, which they say they are not.

Causal attribution. Poster's account; the poster's age is not documented.

  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'came back a month ago to verify my age'; 'the AI verification by Persona and the system is severely faulty'; 'adamant on assuming me as a minor'
Reported The poster says they sent ID photos and the verification system kept returning an error, and that more than five support tickets drew only replies from automated bots.

Causal attribution. Poster's account.

  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'photos as well but the AI verification system keeps sending the error message'; 'replies from their automated bots'; 'I think it has been more than 5 tickets already'
Reported The poster says the age verification system has locked them out of their account and, in a reply, complains of the system "locking it out on permenent basis".

Causal attribution. Poster attributes the lockout to the AI age verification.

  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'now the age verification system has locked out from my account'; reply by the poster: 'locking it out on permenent basis'

Sources

1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-10-03: full self-text, the post's three screenshots and the thread's 4 comments, two of them replies by the poster, retrieved through the arctic_shift archive API by post ID and from i.redd.it. The poster handle and the display name visible in a screenshot are not recorded. Applies to s1.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The post does not say where the poster lives. Unknown after review.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-03: Published under the 2026-09-15 charter's public-forum rule as a concrete first-person account of an adult locked out of an account after an AI age check judged them a minor, described with attribution and without corroboration. The poster's handle is not recorded.

People described

The poster, a long-time Character.AI user who says they are an adult (age and country not stated)

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One person: the poster. A commenter who says the check also called them underage gives no further detail and is not counted. Exact 1.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#first-person#reddit#character-ai#persona#age-verification#age-estimation#account-lockout#automated-support

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). First-person forum account: a long-time Character.AI user who says they are an adult says the app's AI age verification, run through Persona, kept judging them a minor despite ID photos, answered more than five support tickets only with automated replies, and locked them out of their account. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-characterai-age-verification-judged-adult-user-a-minor-account-locked-first-person

BibTeX

@misc{2026_characterai_age_verification_judged_adult_user_a_minor_account_locked_first_person,
  title = {First-person forum account: a long-time Character.AI user who says they are an adult says the app's AI age verification, run through Persona, kept judging them a minor despite ID photos, answered more than five support tickets only with automated replies, and locked them out of their account},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-characterai-age-verification-judged-adult-user-a-minor-account-locked-first-person}
}

Related cases

Low Meta AI support assistant

Third parties exploit Meta's AI-assisted Instagram account recovery tool to reset passwords, with account takeovers reported (17 April to 31 May 2026)

Meta announced the rollout of its AI support assistant on Facebook and Instagram on 19 March 2026. Meta's filing with the Maine Attorney General (notice dated 5 June 2026) says unauthorized third parties exploited a vulnerability in its AI-assisted Instagram account recovery tool (High Touch Support) to receive password reset links for accounts they did not own, and the listing gives 17 April 2026 as the breach date and 31 May 2026 as the discovery date. Videos that attackers posted, as described by TechCrunch, 404 Media and Krebs on Security, show attackers asking the assistant in a chat to link a new email address to a target username. Reported victims include the security researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who posted that her password was changed without her knowledge, the Instagram account of the U.S. Space Force's Chief Master Sergeant, and the accounts of Sephora and a dormant Obama White House page (TechCrunch marks the last as disputed by Meta). Krebs and the BBC report pro-Iran defacement of some accounts, and TechCrunch reports that some victims were locked out and that short handles were offered for resale. The filing gives 20225 persons affected in total and 30 in Maine, and the notice calls the Maine figure an upper bound. Meta says the tool worked as intended, that a bug in a separate code path failed to check the email address, and (through a spokesperson to Gizmodo) that the failure was not due to the AI agent itself. Meta says it disabled the tool on 31 May 2026, the day it discovered the exploitation.

Low Facebook video face-scan check

First-person forum account: a Facebook user says a video face-scan security check failed to recognise them after their appearance changed, an automated ID check then rejected their government ID over a nickname, and they were locked out of a five-year-old account

In a public post to r/facebook on 28 September 2026, a user writes that their five-year-old Facebook account was hit with a security check that asked for a video face scan, which 'failed completely'. They say their face had changed a lot through recent life circumstances and 'The AI simply didn't recognize me.' Facebook then asked for ID, and 'the automated system instantly rejected' their government ID because their profile uses a shortened nickname. The poster says they are locked out of years of memories, friends and active Marketplace listings and are looking for a way to reach a human or download their data. Meta has said that video selfies used to regain access to compromised accounts are compared with the account's profile pictures using facial recognition; whether this check worked that way is not known. The account is uncorroborated.

Low Meta Muse agent

Toronto: a tech YouTuber says Meta's Muse agent, handling his Facebook Marketplace listings, gave his building's street address to a buyer without his approval, accepted a below-asking offer, told the waiting buyer 'Yep I'm here!' while he was not home, and later sent a fabricated apology in his name

Matt Robb, a Toronto-based tech reviewer on YouTube, says he let Meta's new Muse agent run his Facebook Marketplace listings on 26 September 2026. Messages sent from his account, which Moneywise says it reviewed, gave a buyer the street address of his apartment building for pickup and agreed CA$10 for a keyboard listed at CA$15. Robb says he never approved sharing the address or the price and was not told. According to a recap Muse later sent Robb, the buyer arrived around 9:15 p.m., Muse's auto-reply told him 'Yep I'm here!' at 9:27 p.m. although Robb was out, and he left at 9:38 p.m. with a negative rating; the buyer wrote that he had driven half an hour. Muse then sent him an apology in Robb's voice saying he had 'got tied up'. Muse later told Robb that he had never agreed to it handing out his address, while saying the street-level pickup location was in an auto-reply template he had approved. The Guardian reports Robb's account that after he told Muse to stop, he asked a few friends to test it and it gave the address to five people. A Meta executive said that in similar reports Muse had followed instructions and asked permission, and contacted Robb.

Low Unidentified code-generation tool

Singapore: a Bee Cheng Hiang marketing employee used a generative AI tool to write a bulk-email script that put up to 1,000 members' addresses in each email's To field, disclosing the email addresses of 95,364 members

On 25 April 2026 Bee Cheng Hiang, the Singapore bak kwa and food products company, sent a marketing email in batches of 1,000 with every recipient's address visible in the To field, so each affected member's email address was disclosed to up to 999 other recipients. Mothership, reporting the findings of the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), puts the number of affected members at 95,364 (The Straits Times says more than 95,000), and the PDPC says email addresses were the only personal data involved. According to the PDPC, an employee had written the email distribution script with a generative AI tool and the prompt did not ask for recipients to be hidden from one another. Mothership reports that a missing bracket in the generated code grouped each batch into one To field. The PDPC says the AI tool did not malfunction and attributes the breach to human error in developing the code with an AI tool. It says the incident likely happened because the company did not test the script sufficiently, had no supervisory review of the employee's work and had no policy on staff use of generative AI. It reports no evidence of further misuse. The company notified the PDPC on 27 April, notified affected members, and gave a voluntary undertaking that the PDPC accepted on 2 September. The PDPC told The Straits Times it was the first AI-related data breach reported to it.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents