A contract has been awarded by the UK Home Office to implement AI facial recognition to support officers on the ground with verifying the ages of asylum seekers, where they can’t present documentation.
The plans have sparked controversy amid tensions around the government’s approach to border security to tackle immigration.
The tool, assisting immigration officers, will target adult migrants posing as unaccompanied children in a bid to gain asylum.
They have issued guidance on how to use the AI algorithm, which has been trained on datasets of images of people
The FAR is not currently in operational use by the Home Office during a testing phase, whilst there are plans to implement it in 2027.
With potential limitations, the guidance states that the FAE system will be used to “provide additional information to help them make initial age decisions. It won’t be relied upon to make a definitive age decision or to replace holistic approaches such as Merton-compliant age assessments. […]”
“An initial age assessment will always be made by a properly trained immigration officer who can also call on the advice of colleagues and social workers when needed.”
As age algorithms cannot be proven 100% accurate, it raises concerns regarding performance bias according to factors including ethnicity, skin tone, gender, place of birth and image quality.
“In its appraisal for using FAE for age assessments, the Home Office has tested industry leading algorithms on images across different ethnicities and genders. These algorithms will be further tested to assess their suitability for use within the immigration system.”
The tender was awarded to Akhter Computers, a company based in Essex, to make the facial comparison during standard immigration checks.
