Officials are to start using artificial intelligence to help estimate the age of asylum seekers who say they are children.
Angela Eagle, the immigration minister, said on Tuesday the government would test technology that judges a person’s age based on their facial features.
It is the latest example of Labour ministers turning to AI to help solve problems with public services without spending significant amounts of money.
The decision was announced on the same day that David Bolt, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, published a highly critical report into the haphazard way in which officials estimated the age of new arrivals.
Eagle said in a written statement to parliament: “We have concluded that the most cost-effective option to pursue is likely to be facial age estimation, whereby AI technology – trained on millions of images where an individual’s age is verifiable – is able to produce an age estimate with a known degree of accuracy for an individual whose age is unknown or disputed.
“In a situation where those involved in the age assessment process are unsure whether an individual is aged over or under 18, or do not accept the age an individual is claiming to be, facial age estimation offers a potentially rapid and simple means to test their judgments against the estimates produced by the technology.”
Eagle is commissioning a pilot scheme to test the technology, with a view to integrating it into official age verification checks over the course of next year.
John Lewis announced earlier this year it would become the first major UK retailer to use facial age estimation to help approve online knife sales.
The Home Office already uses AI in other areas, such as helping to detect sham marriages. However, that tool has been criticised for disproportionately flagging certain nationalities.
Despite concerns about AI tools exacerbating bias in government decision-making, ministers are exploring other potential uses. Peter Kyle, the science and technology secretary, announced on Monday a deal with OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, to explore deploying AI in areas including justice, security and education.
Bolt’s report said that the mental health of young asylum seekers was suffering because of failures in the age verification systems, especially at Dover, where small boat arrivals are processed.
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“Many of the concerns about policy and practice that have been raised for more than a decade remain unanswered,” Bolt warned, saying arduous conditions at the Dover processing facility could make it harder to accurately estimate ages.
He added: “I have listened to young people who felt disbelieved and dismissed by the Home Office, whose hopes have been crushed, and whose mental health has suffered.”
His findings echo a report by the Refugee Council, which found that at least 1,300 children had been incorrectly deemed to be adults over an 18-month period.
Last month researchers at the London School of Economics and the University of Bedfordshire recommended that the Home Office be stripped of the power to make decisions relating to lone child asylum seekers.