Charity Warns AI Age Checks Could Misclassify Child Refugees as Adults
Human rights groups say the software has a 30-month error margin and has wrongly classified 755 children as adults this year.
- The UK Home Office plans to deploy AI-powered facial-age estimation to assess asylum seekers' ages, despite warnings from advocacy groups regarding the technology's reliability and inherent racial bias.
- Officials intend to use FAE when a minor's age is in dispute, though the government acknowledged that even advanced systems have a "30-month margin of error."
- Lighthouse Reports found the software supplied by German firm Cognitec consistently overestimated the ages of Sub-Saharan Africans, while 755 children were incorrectly identified as adults last year.
- Maddie Harris of the Humans for Rights Network warned that "adultifying" children exposes them to detention and removal, noting the charity already worked with hundreds of minors wrongfully categorized as adults.
- A Home Office spokesperson defended the trial as "a vital tool in maintaining border security," while advocacy groups like Foxglove continue urging officials to abandon the experimental technology.
10 Articles
10 Articles
Human Rights Network blasts Home Office plan to use racist AI on asylum-seeking children
The Human Rights Network has added its voice to the growing number of advocacy organisations and watchdogs which have denounced Home Office plans to use AI facial-recognition software to assess the age of asylum-seeking children. The charity has already worked with hundreds of minors whom the state has wrongfully catagorised as adults. Back in April, […] By Grace
‘Racist’ AI Age-Detection Puts Migrant Children at Risk, Charity Warns
Imprecise and ‘racist’ AI technology set to be used to determine the age of migrants arriving in the UK will lead to solo children being housed with adults, human rights groups have warned. Ministers have been urged to pause the introduction of the age-detection software, which has repeatedly been found to feature a strong bias against Black children, the Guardian reported. The government has acknowledged that even the most advanced versions …
First-ever Home Office data reveals hundreds of child refugees wrongly treated as adults, despite expert warnings
After years of campaigning, the Home Office has for the first time published its own data confirming that hundreds of child refugees arriving in UK alone are being wrongly treated as adults, with devastating consequences. These children are routinely placed in adult accommodation, immigration detention and even adult prisons.
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