UK's AI Age Checks at Borders Raise Child Safety Worries
UK is deploying AI facial age estimation to check asylum seekers' ages at borders.
Why it matters: Legal professionals need to evaluate AI's impact on human rights and government obligations in child protection at borders. Misclassifying minors could lead to serious legal and ethical consequences.
- UK Home Office plans use of facial age estimation (FAE) AI to support age checks of undocumented asylum seekers.
- FAE aims to assist, not replace, human decision-making but may misclassify vulnerable minors due to trauma and malnutrition.
- Critics highlight biases in FAE performance affected by ethnicity, skin tone, gender, and image quality.
- Over 100 organizations including Refugee and Migrant Children's Consortium express concerns about AI's suitability for age assessments.
- As of March 2026, 6,400+ migrants claiming to be children underwent age assessments, amid broader asylum seeker numbers exceeding 93,000.
The UK Home Office is rolling out facial age estimation (FAE) technology to support initial age assessments of asylum seekers who arrive without documentation. This AI analyzes facial features to estimate a person's age, aiming to help officials decide who qualifies for protections given to children. According to official guidance, the technology is intended to supplement, not replace, human judgment.
However, critics warn that FAE systems may fail to account for critical factors like trauma, malnutrition, and the harsh conditions faced by migrants, all of which can affect physical appearance and lead to misclassification. Human Rights Watch cautions that AI face scans were never designed with vulnerable asylum-seeking children in mind and risks making serious errors in age determination.
The Home Office itself acknowledges potential biases, noting FAE’s performance can vary by ethnicity, skin tone, gender, and image quality, raising concerns about reliability across diverse populations. Facial age estimation has been under consideration since at least July 2025 to prevent adults falsely claiming to be minors and accessing child-specific protections, a problem Border Security Minister Alex Norris underscores.
Over 6,400 asylum seekers who claimed to be children have undergone age assessments recently, within a total asylum seeker population exceeding 93,000 as of March 2026. Leading charity groups, including the Refugee and Migrant Children's Consortium of over 100 organizations, are preparing reports analyzing AI's role in this context and highlighting risks to child safety.
The deployment of AI for age verification at UK borders raises significant questions for legal professionals. How governments adopt such technology intersects with rights protections and duties toward vulnerable children, emphasizing the need for careful oversight, transparency, and safeguards against potential harms.
By the numbers:
- 93,525 asylum seekers in UK as of March 2026 — 12% decrease from previous year but over twice pre-pandemic levels
- 6,400+ migrants claiming to be children underwent age assessments recently at UK borders
- Over 100 organizations in Refugee and Migrant Children's Consortium reviewing AI use in age assessments
Yes, but: While AI aims to prevent adults from exploiting protections for children, its limitations and biases risk harming genuinely vulnerable minors.
What's next: The Refugee and Migrant Children's Consortium is finalizing a report scrutinizing AI age verification's impact on child asylum seekers.