That might explain the "on-device" claims. Does Apple have partnerships with age-verification companies, or would it become an age-verification company? Is there a connection between Passkeys (FIDO) and age-verification?
If Apple can perform a digital attestation of a derived attribute, e.g. "older than 18", rather that disclosing name, DoB, address to the visited website, it would likely be well received.
But at that point, we're a hair's breadth away from state-corporate fusion.
I don’t know about websites, but one of Apple’s examples is almost exactly that – “older than 21” – for purchasing alcohol (in the US, yes, yes) without giving over all of the rest of the information on your ID.
Lidar is only on the iPhone Pro rear cameras.
clutches mmWave-less FaceID-less LIDAR-less iPhone SE3