# Home Office knew AI age checks for migrant children were flawed — but will roll it out anyway > Source: > Published: 2026-06-18 06:31:19+00:00 # Home Office knew AI age checks for migrant children were flawed — but will roll it out anyway **Exclusive: **Government advisors describe the tool as ‘hideously flawed’ amid concern facial age estimation has ‘baked-in racial bias’ — and can wrongly identify a 14-year-old as an adult - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments The [Home Office](/topic/home-office) knew an [AI](/topic/ai) tool that will be used to check the age of small boat migrants was flawed but [pressed ahead with its roll-out anyway, ](/news/uk/home-news/ai-facial-age-checks-migrants-uk-border-b2985802.html)*The Independent *can reveal. The AI-powered technology, which predicts someone’s age based on their facial features, judges teenagers to be adults in error, according to a leaked report the Home Office tried to withhold. The secret report also found the technology is least accurate when trying to age migrants from countries [such as Eritrea](/news/uk/home-news/english-channel-eritrea-afghan-east-african-vietnam-b2756039.html) and Sudan – which have the highest number of small boat migrants coming to the UK – amid accusations that the technology has “baked-in racial bias”. It warned that error rates are particularly high for female [child migrants](/topic/child-migrants) from Sub-Saharan Africa, at 4.6 years on average – meaning a 14-year-old girl could be predicted to be an adult. The report, which was produced in April 2025 by civil servants in charge of the biometrics programme, also warned the tech could be less accurate for people[ with visible ageing caused by “stress of travel”. ](/news/uk/home-news/ai-child-asylum-seekers-age-refugee-b2884741.html) Separately, our analysis of public data on the government’s chosen AI provider shows that its tech misclassified more than a third of 16-year-olds as adults and, in some tests, was shown to give the wrong assessment in 70 per cent of cases. Scientific advisors to the Home Office have now spoken out for the first time, telling this publication that they felt the government is rushing to adopt the AI tech for political reasons and chose not to consult them to avoid criticism. Professor Tim Cole, at UCL’s Institute of Child Health, suggested the department is pursuing the technology despite being aware that it is “hideously inaccurate”. Ministers announced last month that Facial Age Estimation (FAE) would be used by immigration officers at the border from next year to “crack down on fake claims by small boat arrivals posing as children”. But, despite knowing about the serious problems, the Home Office said that the “cost-effective” age assessment method had indicated “promising performance and accuracy”. An investigation by *The Independent*, in collaboration [with Lighthouse Reports ](https://www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/uk-fae)and WIRED, has now found the government’s own evaluation of FAE revealed that the technology predicted 17-year-olds to be on average over 18. In one in 20 cases, the technology said that a 17.5-year-old falls outside the age range of 14 and 22.5. It also performed worse on teenage girls. Meanwhile, 60 organisations have today sent an open [letter ](https://www.foxglove.org.uk/open-letter-home-office-facial-age-estimation-children/)to the Home Office calling for a halt to the rollout of FAE, warning that the technology has “baked-in failures and discrimination” and that it is “imprecise at the crucial 16-to-18-year-old boundary”. Martha Dark, co-executive director at Foxglove, the non-profit organisation that co-ordinated the letter, said children should not be test subjects for “experimental tech that has baked-in inaccuracy and racist bias”, adding: “Errors by these tools could have serious consequences: vulnerable children being forced, alone, into adult detention centres.” The Facial Age Estimation Performance Test report – which the Home Office refused to disclose through a freedom of information request, but was later leaked to Lighthouse Reports - evaluated seven commercially available algorithms, including those that are ranked top by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US. Though the Home Office report did not name which AI algorithms were examined, it has since emerged that the tech used in the roll-out will be provided by German company Cognitec Systems. The Home Office said any conclusions drawn in the FAE test report did not relate to active procurement of services from any provider. Separately, the Home Office said in response to a freedom of information request that Cognitec was among seven AI technology suppliers used for internal testing. Cognitec’s algorithm has been probed by the NIST, with the findings published in May. Analysis of the public data shows that the Cognitec tool misclassified more than a third of 16-year-olds as adults when it was tested on US visa application photos. This increased to nearly 70 per cent when the AI system was tested on lower quality border crossing photos, data analysis found. A spokesperson for Cognitec said that the algorithm’s bias was low compared to other algorithms and that they were working to reduce this. They added that the issues with demographic differences affected all vendors and were often related to image quality issues. The Home Office has not released details about exactly how the AI tech will be relied upon by border officials but the internal report discusses the use of an age threshold, which would give the system a margin of error. For example, if the age threshold is set at 20, anyone predicted to be 20 or younger would be classified as a minor. Increasing the age threshold will reduce the risk of children being treated as adults, but it would also increase the number of adults who are treated as children. If the threshold was set to 25, this would inevitably lead to a “large” number of adults being classified as minors, the report warns. A contract for the FAE technology has been awarded a £322,000 contract to IT provider Akhter Computers, with the algorithm provided by Cognitec. The move to use FAE on asylum seekers is unprecedented. While FAE is increasingly being used globally by online platforms and in retail settings to help verify that children are not able to access adult-only content or buy age-restricted items such as alcohol and cigarettes, there are no known cases of its use in a migration context. Lack of accuracy on Sub-Saharan nationals poses a big problem for the Home Office as asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan are now the top nationalities making small boat journeys across the Channel – overtaking migrants from Afghanistan and Iran who had made up the highest number of crossings in 2024. According to government data, in 2025, more than a third (36 per cent) of people for whom an age assessment was raised were from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The number of asylum seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa subject to age assessments has consistently grown over the years, from 163 people in 2015 to 2,331 people in 2025. Testing of the AI algorithms was carried out on facial images from the Home Office’s own immigration databases, mainly from the records of visa and residency permit applicants not asylum applicants. The Home Office said internal testing was done in accordance with legal advice and images weren’t shared externally. Before it was disbanded in July 2025, the Home Office had a panel of scientific advisors to help guide on methods of age assessment, called the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee (AESAC). Professor Cole, a former member of the committee who was awarded the CBE in 2025 for services to medical statistics, said he felt the committee was stood down by the Home Office because it didn’t want members to scrutinise the move to AI. He said: “We were keen to highlight the inadequacies of facial age estimation, but this opportunity was not presented to us, and then the committee was shut down, I suspect for the reason that we would have been quite damning about it. “Their argument was that our expertise was very specialised and not relevant to facial age estimation. In reality, what facial age estimation is doing is trying to interpret the age-related changes in appearance, which are fundamentally biological, and our background is biological growth and ageing.” He has seen the Home Office’s internal evaluation of FAE and offered to conduct a statistical review of it but was turned down, he says. Denise Syndercombe-Court, professor of forensic genetics at King's College London, said she believed the Home Office disbanded the committee because they feared it would slow down the roll-out of FAE: “It was probably because they believed they had a cost-effective technological alternative in the form of FAE. It needed to be rapid to meet the perceived urgent political demands, and we were not asked for our view.” She added: “I think this needs to be examined from a scientific and statistical point of view before the technology is used. I don’t have a problem with it, as long as it’s fair and proportionate to the people being exposed to it – and I haven’t seen evidence that this is the case.” The Home Office said that they have commissioned the National Physical Laboratory to carry out an independent review of testing and trial reports produced as FAE is implemented. They added that FAE required different fields of expertise to provide advice. A spokesperson said: “Robust age assessments are a vital tool in maintaining border security and safeguarding children. We have rigorous processes in place to verify an individual’s age, and are working to modernise these through the testing of fast and effective Facial Age Estimation technology. “This groundbreaking assistive tool is designed as an additional source of information for immigration officers, and does not replace or overrule human judgement.” ## Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies [Comments](#comments-area)