Janitor AI Just Forced Face Photo Age Verification on Everyone

Update, 12 September 2026: Janitor AI’s age check applies only to people connecting from Australia, Brazil and the UK. It started on 24 April 2026 and reached the UK on 15 June 2026, and Janitor’s help centre says there are no plans to extend it to any other region. The headline and first version of this report wrongly said the check applied to everyone, although Janitor had announced on 30 March that it would cover only Brazil and Australia.

On 24 April 2026, Janitor AI started asking some users to prove their age before they could keep chatting. Within hours r/JanitorAI_Official filled with posts from people refusing to hand a face scan to an AI company and asking what would happen if they said no.

The check is tied to your IP address, and only connections from Australia, Brazil or the UK trigger it. That is why a few accounts hit the screen on day one while most users never saw it at all.

This article covers what the rollout looked like from inside the subreddit, what Janitor has published about how the check works, and your options if you connect from one of the three countries.

What Actually Happened

Janitor AI began a one-time age check on 24 April 2026 for users connecting from Australia and Brazil, and added the UK on 15 June 2026. Users connecting from any other country can keep chatting with no check at all.

What is age verification: A gate that asks a user to prove they are over a minimum age before using a service, usually with an ID scan or a face-based age estimate.

The first hours played out in the subreddit, and several people reported the check failing outright. One Brazilian user said the face scan ended on a success message and then sent them back to the start, and the ID scan and AgeKey looped the same way. Another said the face scan failed about five times in a row.

One thread posted at 05:54 UTC on 25 April, about 14 hours after the check went live, was titled “Guys it here age verification is here guess who cant use the app anymore i aint giving a ai company a picture of my face or anything”. Its highest-voted reply settled the scope: “It’s only for Australia and Brazil at the moment, due to legislation those countries passed.”

The check also landed on the same day as an interface update that broke the delete-messages button for some users, so the subreddit was already primed for bad news. Janitor’s own posts give the full timeline:

1. 30 March 2026: Janitor announced that users in Brazil and Australia would need to verify their age, with no start date yet.
2. 23 April 2026: its changelog set the start for 9am PT the next day.
3. 24 April 2026: the one-time check went live for connections from Australia and Brazil.
4. 15 June 2026: the UK was added, a week after a changelog notice. Janitor’s first answer to the UK law, in July 2025, had been to block UK users outright.
5. Since then: Janitor says it has no plans to extend age verification to any other region.

The help centre names the law behind each country: Australia’s Age-Restricted Material Codes under the Online Safety Act 2021, Brazil’s Digital ECA (Lei No. 15.211/2025) and the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023. It puts the possible fines at up to A$35 million in Australia, $9.5 million in Brazil and £18 million in the UK, and says Janitor chose verification over blocking the three countries outright.

Janitor has framed the check as a legal requirement since that first post in March, which said “this is not a choice we made”. For the UK side, the UK government’s Online Safety Act explainer sets out the age checks it expects from platforms that host adult content.

Why This Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

Age verification asks for identity or biometric data, which is why the April reaction was so strong. Janitor’s own posts say what the check collects: k-ID runs it and passes back only a yes or no on whether you are over 18.

In April most of the anger was about handing biometric data to a free roleplay site that people had months of chats on. Some posters said they would quit before they verified. If a character does vanish, it helps to know whether it was moderated or fully deleted, since the two have different recovery paths.

Janitor’s 30 March post had already spelled out what the check involves. k-ID, the provider Discord, Twitch and Snapchat also use, offers three options, and each one ends with Janitor receiving a pass or fail:

1. Facial age estimation: a short video selfie processed on your device, with nothing uploaded or stored.
2. ID scan: a photo of a government ID, deleted right after confirmation and never shared with Janitor.
3. AgeKey: reuses a check you already passed on Discord or Snapchat, confirmed with Face ID or a fingerprint in about three seconds.

The help centre adds that your ID or selfie data is never linked to your Janitor account and that your characters, chats and settings stay as they are. Detection works from your IP address alone, with no GPS or address lookup.

Face-based age estimation still misjudges some adults, and the Character AI face scan rollout ran into exactly that problem. Janitor offers the ID scan and AgeKey alongside the face check, which gives an adult who looks young more than one way through.

SpicyChat, the closest swap for most Janitor users, now runs its own age check for NSFW content in France, the UK, Italy, Australia and 26 US states, so it is no escape for users in the UK or Australia.

What This Means for You

If you connect from outside Australia, Brazil and the UK, nothing changes for you. If you connect from one of them, you can verify once through k-ID or switch to a platform you are more comfortable with.

Here is the order I would work through if the screen appeared for me:

1. Pick the option you are comfortable with. The selfie never leaves your device, the ID scan is deleted after confirmation, and AgeKey reuses a check you have already passed elsewhere.
2. If you would rather not verify, save your chats first. Copy out any chats and character details you care about before you stop using the account.
3. Pick a fallback platform. The Janitor AI alternatives guide covers the realistic options, and the SpicyChat vs Janitor AI comparison is the closest one-to-one swap, though SpicyChat checks ages in the UK and Australia too.
4. If the check itself fails, work through the fixes. The Janitor AI age verification troubleshooting guide covers screens that loop or stay stuck.

If you connect from one of the three countries and decline the check, Janitor AI stays locked for you, because the help centre makes verification a condition of access there. A second account will not change that, since the check is triggered by the country your connection comes from.

Once you pass it, Janitor describes the check as a one-time step. A screen that keeps bouncing you back to a security check is a different problem, usually on the browser side, and the troubleshooting guide above walks through it.

What Comes Next

Janitor says the check is driven solely by legal requirements and that it has no plans to extend it to other regions. It said the same on 30 March, eleven weeks before the UK was added.

The 30 March post said there were “absolutely no plans to roll this out anywhere else”, and Janitor has since edited that post to name the UK as well. The help-centre article, updated on 15 June to add the UK, repeats that there are no plans for other regions.

No other country has been added since, and Janitor’s changelog lists no newer region as of 12 September 2026.

Both expansions were posted in that changelog before they went live, a day ahead for Brazil and Australia and a week ahead for the UK, which makes it the page to watch.