requiring

Valve’s extremely popular PC gaming store Steam is now requiring users in the United Kingdom to verify their age using a credit card. This is a direct result of the UK’s controversial Online Safety Act.

As of August 29, as spotted by Eurogamer, it looks like Valve is now requiring that all users in the United Kingdom verify how old they are before they will be able to access mature video games. Valve has also updated its official Steam Support website with new information about age verification, telling UK users that “in order to access Steam store pages for mature content games,” they’ll need to go through an “opt-in process” that requires age verification via credit card. Going through this process will “trigger a £0 authorization” on the card to check if it’s active and real.

Valve says that as long as the credit card stored on the Steam account is valid, the account is considered “age verified.” So you should only have to do this once. Hopefully.

According to the updated Steam Support website, Valve “reviewed” all age verification methods and determined that using a credit card preserved “the maximum degree of user privacy” compared to some other sites and services that use AI-powered facial scanning tech.

“The data processed in the verification process is identical to that of the millions of other Steam users who make purchases or store their payment details for convenience,” explained Valve on the website. “The verification process therefore provides no information about a user’s content preferences to payment providers or other third parties. Valve handles the verification process using its own internal payment processing system, which is independently certified under the PCI-DSS standard.”

Also on the site, when explaining why this new verification process is being forced upon users, Valve directly and politely lays the blame on the UK’s new online safety laws and Ofcom, the nation’s independent regulator for online safety.

Valve isn’t the first video game company to run into issues with the UK’s Online Safety Act, which has placed large, controversial restrictions and regulations on how people under 18 can access the internet. In July, Xbox began rolling out its own age verification process in the United Kingdom. Sony is “rolling out” an age verification process in the UK, too.

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Certain Windows 365 Copilot users now have access to a new feature in Excel that lets you use Microsoft’s Copilot AI to generate formulas, but you might want to be careful how you use it. Microsoft is already warning users that the AI might not always be accurate.

The new “COPILOT” function allows you to skip writing Excel formulas yourself by telling Copilot what you want to do and the cells you want to use. For instance, you could type in “=COPILOT(“Summarize this feedback”, A2:A20)” to have Copilot generate a formula that summarizes the content in a column of cells. The examples Microsoft suggests in the support page for the COPILOT function focus on classifying, summarizing, and generating content.

However, Microsoft specifically warns not to use it for “any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility,” like numerical calculations. Microsoft also advises against using the feature for “financial reporting, legal documents, or other high-stakes scenarios,” so basically most of the things people turn to Excel for.

Much like with other generative AI tools, if you’re using the COPILOT function, you need to keep an eye out for the AI hallucinating strange results or misunderstanding your prompts, which of course calls its basic utility into question.

Aside from accuracy, privacy is also an obvious concern here. Microsoft says in the announcement blog post that “Your data sent through the COPILOT function is never used to train or improve the AI models. The information you input remains confidential and is used solely to generate your requested output.”

This is still a beta feature, so Microsoft is still refining it with the help of user feedback and it isn’t widely available yet. Right now, it’s only available to Microsoft 365 Copilot Beta Channel users. Functionality is also somewhat limited even beyond the accuracy concerns—the COPILOT function is currently maxed out at 100 calls per 10 minutes or 300 calls per hour. It can’t access “live web data or internal business documents,” either.

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Steam Now Requiring Users To Verify Age In The UK

Microsoft launches Copilot AI function in Excel, but warns not to use it in ‘any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility’