UK plans AI age checks for asylum seekers
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Home Office plans to deploy an AI tool to identify adults posing as children.
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The technology is designed for situations where people lack verifiable identity documents, which is often the case for people arriving from countries like Sudan and Afghanistan.
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Experts are concerned that using AI technology to assess age could lead to detrimental mistakes.
The UK’s Home Office will start using an AI tool to estimate the age of asylum seekers claiming to be children from next year.
The system was developed under a contract awarded to Harlow-based IT supplier Akhter Computers, worth £322,000 ($433,000). It’s meant to provide "an algorithm that can accurately predict the age of a subject.”
According to the Home Office, the tool will simplify the process of identifying adult migrants "attempting to game the system”. So far, officials said that early trials demonstrated "promising performance and accuracy."
The technology is designed for situations where people lack verifiable identity documents, such as when migrants arrive by small boats. It will be used alongside existing age-estimation protocols.
Child asylum seekers are treated differently from adults in the UK. As such, unaccompanied minors enter the care of local authorities and receive additional legal protections.
If an age is disputed, they are referred to local authority social workers, who then conduct a holistic assessment. Recent data from the Home Office showed that over four in ten people whose age was disputed and who were first assessed in March 2026 were found to be adults.
However, earlier in July 2025, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration published a report saying that “in the absence of a foolproof ‘test’ of chronological age…it is inevitable that some age assessments will be wrong, which is clearly a cause for concern, especially where a child is denied the rights and protections to which they are entitled.”
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Current age assessment types include appearance and demeanour checks and document examination. But many asylum seekers arrive with no documents at all, which complicates the process. The Guardian reported that thousands of cases are based on a visual assessment – if a person looks significantly over 18, border officials can move them to adult accommodation or immigration detention.
The technology, which has already been trialled on images of people from different ethnic backgrounds and genders, will be further tested before being rolled out in 2027. Live testing is expected to begin next year at Western Jet Foil, a primary facility for migrants arriving in the UK via small boats across the English Channel.
Experts voiced concern that using AI technology to assess age could produce inaccurate results, as it can be biased or unsuited to account for trauma or malnutrition, which can influence appearance.
"The Government needs to scrap this deeply flawed approach to assessing child refugees,” said Anna Bacciarelli, senior AI researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Experimenting with unproven technology to determine whether or not a child should be granted protections they desperately need and are legally entitled to is cruel and unconscionable.
“In addition to subjecting vulnerable children and young people to a dehumanising process that undermines their human rights, we don’t actually know if facial age estimation works."
Previous research showed that AI systems that analyze facial features can be less accurate for people of color, women, children, and elderly individuals.
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