The British government will introduce facial age estimation (FAE) for asylum seekers starting next year, WIRED, Lighthouse Reports, and The Independent have revealed. The technology—where AI scans a person's face to predict their age—is intended to determine the age of migrants who arrive without documents. If children are incorrectly classified as adults, they can lose legal protections and be placed in adult detention centers. The move is believed to be the first time such an AI system has been used for this purpose.
The investigation obtained a leaked Home Office report detailing tests of seven FAE algorithms. While the document largely covers the "best" performing algorithm, it found that the system performed significantly worse on Sub-Saharan Africans—the largest group of migrants arriving via small boats in recent years, according to Home Office data. For female Sub-Saharan Africans, the age estimate was off by an average of 4.6 years. That means a 13.5-year-old girl could be assessed as 18 and treated as an adult.
The report does not name the companies behind the algorithms tested. Years of evaluations by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have consistently shown that FAE accuracy depends on the subject's race and the quality of the photo.
Scientific Committee Disbanded During AI Development
The Home Office disbanded a scientific committee designed to advise on broader age estimation methods while it was exploring the AI system. Tim Cole, emeritus professor of medical statistics at University College London's Institute of Child Health and a former committee member, said: "We were keen to highlight the inadequacies of facial age estimation, but this opportunity was not presented to us, and then the committee was shut down." Cole described the face scans as "hideously inaccurate." A Home Office spokesperson stated the committee was disbanded because it required "different fields of expertise."
High-Stakes Deployment of Flawed Technology
The findings come amid a global wave of anti-migrant policies and increased spending on surveillance technology, often deployed against vulnerable populations with little awareness of how it works or how to challenge it. The Home Office claims face scanning is an "additional" tool and that it has "rigorous processes in place to verify an individual's age." However, the internal data reveals that the technology's flaws could directly affect the legal status of children seeking asylum. For technology leaders, this case underscores the critical need for rigorous bias testing and transparency before deploying AI in high-stakes government or enterprise settings where errors can have irreversible consequences.
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