Roblox is getting ready to roll out its latest safety feature at a time when it is confronting a growing number of lawsuits from states and families that claim the popular gaming app falsely advertised itself as safe for children.

The company told WRAL this week that it will soon make users go through AI-powered facial age-estimation technology to help verify that gamers really are the age they say they are.

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“That will be required to engage in any kind of communications on the platform,” said Eliza Jacobs, Senior Director of Product Policy at Roblox. “So, until you use facial age estimation, you will not have access to chat anywhere on the platform.”

Jacobs tells WRAL Investigates that Roblox will launch facial age estimation on Nov. 18 in some parts of the world, including Australia, ahead of the U.S. launch.  

“I think Roblox is starting to get the message, in that they’re putting up hundreds of millions of dollars most recently into adding safeguards,” said Mike Grieco, founding partner of Gould Grieco & Hensley.

Related: Only on WRAL: Roblox official answers questions about safety on the app

Grieco represents thousands of families who claim their children have been preyed upon through Roblox. 

One of the families Gould Greico & Hensley represents is from Wake County. The family claims that their teenage daughter was introduced to an adult predator while playing Roblox when she was 13 years old. The lawsuit claims the teen’s communication with the predator moved from Roblox to Discord, where he coerced her into sending him sexually explicit content.

“Even one of these cases is too many and our hearts go out to the families who have been affected in this way. It is unacceptable and we are working around the clock to try and prevent this as much as we can,” said Jacobs.

Roblox has been steadily rolling out various safeguards in recent years. 

In November 2024, the company announced an ability for parents to create “parent accounts” that they can link with their child’s new or existing account. 

WRAL Investigates created a parent account and child account to test the feature, and found the linking process to be straightforward. The app verifies the authenticity of the parent by having them submit a credit card or ID. Through this, parents can control the maturity of the experiences their child engages with – minimal, mild or moderate -  can see who their child is connected with, and can control access to the app’s chat feature. Lawsuits describe how chat can be the gateway for predators – where trust is built and kids are catfished.

Watch: How to set up parental controls in Roblox: Step-by-step & what’s happening to kids on Roblox

Jacobs acknowledges more work needs to be done to make sure parents know about this feature.

“We’ve done lots of communications about this, but we obviously need to do more to really get the word out. We want parents to be engaged with our parental controls and the systems we have to keep their kids safe,” said Jacobs, who added that Roblox uses a “safe by default” strategy.

Still, Grieco is skeptical about the effectiveness of the safety measures in place or expected soon.

“Until all of those measures are foolproof, tested and retested, I don’t think Roblox is safe to use for any minor,” Grieco said.

In response to Grieco’s advice to abstain from the app, Jacobs said “we are building systems every day to make [Roblox] even safer.”