Starting next year, the British government plans to use artificial intelligence to scan the faces of asylum seekers at the border and estimate their ages. The move is believed to be the first time a facial age estimation system has been used this way by any government. Many asylum seekers arriving in the UK carry no documents proving their age. If children are wrongly classified as adults, they can lose legal protections and be placed in adult detention centers alongside adults.
An investigation by WIRED and Lighthouse Reports, working with The Independent, obtained an internal UK government report that details how the technology was tested. According to that reporting, the results raise serious questions about whether the system is ready for use in decisions with this much at stake.
The leaked Home Office document covers the best-performing of seven facial age estimation systems the department tested last year. The report found that system performed significantly worse when estimating the ages of Sub-Saharan Africans compared to other groups. Sub-Saharan Africans are the largest group of migrants entering the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats. They also had more age assessments raised in 2025 than any other regional group, according to Home Office data.
The margin of error for that group is not small. For female Sub-Saharan Africans, the system's age estimates were off by an average of 4.6 years. That means a 13-and-a-half-year-old girl could be assessed by the AI as an 18-year-old adult. That single error could determine whether a child is placed in a facility designed for adults or given the legal protections afforded to minors.
The report does not directly name the companies behind the algorithms that were tested. The Home Office document was obtained by Lighthouse Reports and shared as part of the collaborative investigation.
The development comes as age verification technology spreads across both the online and offline world. Australia has introduced social media age bans. Roughly half of US states have moved to restrict access to pornography online using age checks. The technology behind many of those systems is now being applied in physical, high-stakes settings with consequences that can be immediate and difficult to reverse.
The investigation also notes that the second Trump administration and other governments around the world have increased spending on surveillance technology as part of broader anti-migrant policies. Critics have pointed out that the people most affected by these systems often have little knowledge that the technology is being used, how it works, or what options they have to challenge a result.
The UK government has not publicly addressed the specific findings in the leaked report. The planned rollout of facial age estimation at the border is set to begin next year.
