UK to Deploy AI Tool for Asylum Seeker Age Checks in 2027

The Home Office has awarded a three-year contract worth £322,000 to Harlow-based Akhter Computers Ltd to develop and test an AI tool that estimates the age of asylum seekers from photographs taken at the border. The system is intended to supplement existing age assessments conducted by border officials.

It will be trialled on live cases at Western Jet Foil in Dover next year before wider deployment in mid-2027.

In the year ending March 2026, more than 6,400 migrants claiming to be children underwent age assessments, and 43 percent were later determined to be adults, according to Home Office data. A government-commissioned report last year found that some adults had been classified as children and some children had been classified as adults under current procedures.

Security and Asylum Alex Norris said adult migrants making false age claims had diverted support from children at risk. Human Rights Watch senior AI researcher Anna Bacciarelli said the technology was unproven outside retail settings and called for the plan to be scrapped.

Professor Sam Baron, interim CEO of the British Association of Social Workers, stated that age assessments should remain with social workers and warned that AI shortcuts could create safeguarding risks. The Home Office has already tested the software on images across ethnicities and genders present in the asylum-seeking population, though results have not yet been used for live decisions.