Charities denounce British plans to use artificial intelligence to assess the age of young asylum-seekers

A coalition of more than a hundred refugee child advocacy organizations said controversial plans to use AI to assess the age of young asylum seekers could lead to more children wrongly ending up in prisons or adult detention centers.

The warning follows the Home Office's announcement on Friday of a contract to deploy AI facial age estimation technology on young asylum seekers whose ages are in dispute.

A report from the Consortium for Refugee and Migrant Children seen by the Guardian before its publication in June sounds the alarm about the risks of using this technology on young people who do not match the standards of others in their age group.

The consortium, whose member organizations work to promote and protect the rights of refugee and migrant children, says that due to the trauma, undernourishment and arduous journeys young people undertake to reach safety, assessing AI is complex.

The report – Benchmarks and Borders: the use of facial age estimation to assess the age of unaccompanied young asylum seekers – does not completely rule out the use of AI, but cautions against its use and says it should not replace comprehensive age assessments carried out by social workers.

It urges the Home Office to use AI in an advisory rather than determinative capacity, providing a range of safeguards including access to an appropriate adult, legal advice and the right to challenge decisions.

He urges the government not to replace human errors made in some age determination cases with mechanical errors.

Assessing the age of this group of young people is complex, particularly as the majority of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arriving in the UK are aged 16 or 17. According to Home Office data, young asylum seekers are more than twice as likely to be recorded as children in assessments carried out by social workers than in those carried out by immigration officers at the border, with more than two thirds of them considered minors.

The Home Office announcement focuses on adults who make “false statements”, pretend to be children and try to “cheat the system”, but it also recognizes the need to protect minors.

Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said: “For too long, adult migrants making false age claims have exploited the system and diverted vital support from children at risk.

“That’s why we’re deploying AI technology to put a stop to this, ensuring those who abuse the system are identified, detained and deported without delay, and those who deserve support and protection.” »

Final decisions will continue to be made by immigration officers, and the Home Office said the technology would be subject to rigorous testing, evaluation and assurance before its national rollout.

Co-chair of the Consortium for Refugee and Migrant Children, Kamena Dorling, said: “The government’s proposals are deeply concerning. AI cannot take into account factors that can significantly affect a young person's appearance after fleeing conflict and persecution and undertaking dangerous journeys, including trauma, malnutrition and exhaustion.

“Existing evidence also shows that AI faces the same issues of bias and inaccuracy as human decision-making, with similar error patterns. »

Kama Petruczenko, senior policy analyst at the Refugee Council and member of the consortium, said: “The government's own figures already show that hundreds of children are being wrongly treated as adults following faulty visual assessments at the border, with devastating consequences for their safety and well-being.

“AI and facial age estimation technology are not a simple or risk-free answer to these long-standing problems. Poor image quality and biases in datasets can also affect accuracy.

"There is a real risk that this technology will create a false sense of certainty in decisions that are already extremely difficult to make. If faulty assessments are simply automated, more children could find themselves wrongly placed in adult housing, detention centers or even prisons."

The Home Office says AI will estimate an individual's age in seconds by analyzing facial photographs already taken during small boat arrivals in Dover. A contract for the work worth £322,000 over three years has been awarded to Akhter Computers Ltd, under which the technology will be tested and further developed before being rolled out in 2027.