The Home Office Announces Plans to Use AI to Assist In Age Assessments of Asylum Seekers

On Friday 29 May 2026, the Home Office released new guidance on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support age assessments of asylum seekers. In particular, the use of Facial Age Estimation (FAE) technology for unaccompanied child migrants without official documents to prove their age.

In the guidance, the Home Office set out plans to allow immigration officers to use FAE technology, which uses AI algorithms to analyse facial images and produce an accurate estimate of a person’s age. 

According to the Home Office, the use of AI technology in making initial age decisions is aimed at being a cost-effective way of supplementing human decision-making, and detecting adult migrants presenting themselves as children. The issue of age assessment has become increasingly significant in UK asylum law, with a number of challenges being brought against the Home Office.

Children under the age of 18 arriving in the UK without parents or guardians to seek asylum are treated differently to adult migrants. Unaccompanied migrant children are the responsibility of the local authority, and are entitled to be supported and accommodated as children. This allows child migrants various protections which are not available to adults. Where an individual’s age is uncertain and they arrive in the UK without any official documents, their age requires to assessed and determined so that the Home Office can take the appropriate safeguarding measures.  

The Home Office plan to test the AI software throughout 2026, with an official roll-out planned for 2027. It will first be tested on asylum seekers at Dover’s processing center throughout the next year. It has not yet been used on live asylum cases.

The Home Office guidance does state that AI systems can produce biased results. It goes on to note that National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) testing on the new system had found that errors rates are higher for female faces than male faces. Clearly, AI also cannot take into account the various factors considered by the social workers and border force agents who usually carry out age assessments, such as a migrant’s background, education, demeanour, and emotional responses to questioning. Critics have warned that age assessment is a complex process, and it cannot be reduced to physical appearance alone. 

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