UK Home Office to use AI facial recognition to verify asylum seekers' ages

The UK Home Office plans to introduce AI-powered facial recognition technology next year to verify the ages of asylum seekers. Officials say the tool will help identify adults falsely claiming to be minors. The move raises questions about accuracy and civil liberties.

The UK Home Office has announced plans to deploy artificial intelligence facial recognition technology to determine the ages of asylum seekers, with the system set to be operational from next year. The tool is intended to help border officials identify adult migrants who may be falsely presenting themselves as children in order to gain more favourable treatment under asylum rules.

Officials say the technology will make it easier to catch those "attempting to game the system" by claiming to be minors. Age disputes are a persistent challenge in asylum processing, as individuals without documentation may receive different legal protections depending on whether they are classified as children or adults.

Privacy and accuracy concerns

Civil liberties organisations and refugee advocates have raised concerns about the reliability of facial recognition age estimation, warning that such systems can produce inaccurate results — particularly for people from certain ethnic backgrounds. Critics argue that errors in age assessment could result in vulnerable young people being wrongly classified as adults and denied appropriate protections.

The Home Office has not yet released detailed information about which vendor will supply the technology, the accuracy benchmarks it must meet, or how decisions made by the AI system can be challenged or appealed. Transparency around the deployment of biometric tools in immigration enforcement has been a recurring point of contention between the government and oversight bodies.

Broader push for tech-driven border control

The announcement is part of a wider effort by UK authorities to modernise immigration and border processing through digital and biometric tools. The government has argued that greater use of technology will reduce costs, speed up case resolution, and improve the integrity of the asylum system. However, experts caution that automation in high-stakes decisions affecting vulnerable people requires rigorous safeguards and independent scrutiny.