UK To Scan Asylum-Seekers’ Faces To Check Age—Despite Knowing The Technology Is Flawed
Although the Home Office says facial scanning is designed to be an “adjunct” tool for border officials and will not “replace or override human judgement,” it did not respond to questions about how it plans to use the technology in real-world settings. “In cases of uncertainty,” the spokesman said, “people will continue to be treated as children until further tests are carried out.”
Increasing Ratings
The UK government first announced its plans to use an age rating based on decisions by border staff to check migrants in July 2025. Since then, the Home Office has delayed the rollout until 2027, saying it will use “advanced AI technology” to “eliminate fraudulent claims” with the aim of stopping “adults trying to game the system.”
In the past five years, AI facial scanning has emerged as an important part of controversial online age verification systems, as lawmakers have mandated social networks, pornographic websites, and some retailers check the age of their users. It has also been trialled in other pubs and shops in the UK. Facial age estimation works by analyzing a person’s facial features—with subsystems trained on millions of age-labeled faces—to generate an estimated age. In controlled laboratory experiments, the best algorithms can predict a person’s age within 2.5 years.
However, the results can vary greatly depending on the algorithm, gender of the person, demographic information, and other factors. Poor quality images, such as those with poor lighting, can significantly reduce systems performance. (Example: People have fooled other systems using images of characters from video games.) The Home Office appears to be aware of the potential problems with the technology and is still pushing ahead with its plan.
A leaked Home Office report from April 2025, which was completed before the government bought face-scanning technology, describes testing seven FAE algorithms against more than 2.5 million images. However, an internal report says the unnamed “high-performance algorithm” had “significant deviations” when tested on images of people in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, that system is also more predictive of a 17-year-old than 18, and it does worse for women.
Tens of thousands of people apply for asylum in the UK each year, many arriving in the country after a dangerous, physically demanding journey on small boats across the English Channel. Currently, border officials who doubt the age of a person who claims to be under 18 can check their physical appearance, answers to interview questions, and general behavior, to make a preliminary determination of their age. These early age assessments are made at the “first meeting,” the Home Office says in guidance. As of 2010, 40 percent of people who have passed the age test have been classified as elderly, according to official statistics.
A leaked Home Office report says the findings are based mainly on tests using high-quality images taken by human subjects, and that could mean the algorithms’ accuracy rates will be worse in practice. The Home Office has revealed that the FAE technology will assist immigration officers who check age while working at a first encounter.
