UK to scan asylum-seekers' faces for age checks despite known flaws in technology
Tags AI · Policy · Consumer
The UK government plans to deploy facial age estimation (FAE) technology at its borders starting next year to determine the age of asylum seekers who lack documentation. An internal Home Office report obtained by WIRED and Lighthouse Reports shows the systems regularly mistake children for adults and contain serious bias problems. The technology's largest error rates affect the demographic groups that constitute the majority of migrants subject to age assessments. If children are incorrectly classified as adults, they can lose legal protections and be placed in adult-only detention centers.
Technical significance
This represents the first known government deployment of facial age estimation in an immigration context. The documented bias and error rates raise serious ethical and legal questions about using AI systems with known failure modes in high-stakes decisions that can determine whether a person is treated as a child or an adult under the law.