UK to roll out facial age scans for asylum seekers — The Independent
The British government plans to start using the independent facial age estimation system next year to help decide the ages of asylum seekers at the United Kingdom border. Internal tests found the technology regularly mistakes children for adults, including a bias that was worse for Sub-Saharan Africans.
The Home Office move would be the first known use of facial age estimation in this setting. If a child is classed as an adult, that person can lose legal protections and be placed in adult-only detention centers.
Tim Cole and the Home Office review
Tim Cole, emeritus professor of medical statistics at University College London’s Institute of Child Health and a former committee member, 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". Cole described the face scans as "hideously inaccurate".
An internal UK government report obtained by Lighthouse Reports detailed tests of facial age estimation technologies carried out last year. The leaked Home Office document largely covered the best performing of seven facial age estimation algorithms tested by the department, but it did not name the companies behind those systems.
Sub-Saharan Africans in 2025
The report said the system performed significantly worse when used on Sub-Saharan Africans than on other groups. Home Office data showed Sub-Saharan Africans had more age assessments raised in 2025 than cohorts from other regions, and the group is the largest among migrants entering the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats in recent years.
For female Sub-Saharan Africans, the guessed age was off by an average of 4.6 years. On that error rate, a 13.5-year-old girl could be assessed as an 18-year-old adult.
What happens next
The Home Office had disbanded a scientific committee set up to advise it on broader age estimation methods while it was exploring the introduction of AI. The rollout next year means asylum seekers without documents proving their age will be the first people exposed to a system that the government itself found could misclassify children and perform worst against Sub-Saharan Africans.
Years of test results from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology add further evidence in the same direction, and the practical question now is whether the Home Office will proceed with the rollout unchanged or alter the rules before it starts.
