Home Office to use AI facial age checks on asylum seekers

TL;DR:

• The Home Office has awarded a three-year, £322,000 contract to Harlow-based Akhter Computers to develop AI facial age-estimation for use at UK borders, with a live trial at Dover’s Western Jet Foil planned for next year and rollout in mid-2027.
• The tool estimates age from a photograph to flag adults claiming to be children; Home Office data shows 43% of more than 6,400 people assessed as claimed children in the year to March 2026 were found to be adults.
• Human Rights Watch has called the scheme “cruel and unconscionable”, arguing facial age estimation is unproven in refugee settings.

A UK government plan to deploy AI facial age-estimation on asylum seekers has moved from proposal to procurement, with a contract now awarded and a live trial scheduled. The technology will analyse a photograph taken at the border to estimate age, acting as an additional check when an individual’s age is in doubt rather than replacing the document, X-ray and MRI assessments already carried out by immigration officers.

The case the government is making

Ministers frame the tool as a fix for a measurable problem. Border Security Minister Alex Norris said adults “making false age claims have exploited the system and diverted vital support away from children at risk”. The government’s own independent immigration inspector, however, has previously found errors in both directions — adults classified as children and children wrongly classified as adults — and concluded that, absent a foolproof test, some assessments will inevitably be wrong.

That two-sided error rate is the crux of the civil-liberties objection. Anna Bacciarelli of Human Rights Watch argued there is “no ethical way to move forward”, noting the technology has so far been used in shops and bars to verify adult ages, not to decide whether a child receives legal protections. A wrong call in this setting denies a child the care system route rather than a pint.

Looking forward

The deployment makes the UK an early test case for AI age-estimation in high-stakes border decisions, a use far removed from the retail age-verification the same techniques were built for. With testing already run on diverse image sets but not yet used for live decisions, the 2027 rollout will hinge on whether published accuracy and error rates can withstand legal and ethical challenge — and whether the £322,000 contract delivers a tool robust enough to bear the weight placed on it.