Flawed and racialised models that underpin the AI-powered age-detection systems to be introduced by the British government will endanger children, rights groups and children\u2019s charities have warned.<\/p>\n
Urging ministers to reverse plans to introduce facial age-estimation technology to screen migrants, critics have warned that black children arriving from conflict zones are at risk of being of thrust into the adult system.<\/p>\n
Maddie Harris, of the Humans for Rights Network<\/a>, said the charity had worked with hundreds of children who were already being wrongly filtered into the adult system during age assessments at borders carried out by immigration officers.<\/p>\n In May, the Helen Bamber Foundation revealed<\/a> that 755 children in 2025 were incorrectly identified as adults on arrival to the UK, according to Home Office figures.<\/p>\n Harris said the introduction of AI was a \u201ccheap process\u201d that would not improve these numbers. \u201cThis is not about protecting children \u2013 this is about shoring up the decisions that [the authorities] are making,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The government has admitted<\/a> that even the best systems can have a 30-month margin of error.<\/p>\n Harris said this is particularly risky for children, especially those from countries such as Sudan and Somalia, who she said were already \u201cadultified\u201d by the system.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as a child is treated as an adult, they are susceptible to \u2013 or exposed, rather \u2013 to any of the egregious consequences that the Home Office<\/a> is applying to adults, such as detention and removal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Unaccompanied children would be forced into accommodation alongside adults, exposing them to risk and to the violence threatened by the rise in protests targeting accommodation for asylum seekers, she said.<\/p>\n In May, the government announced a contract to use facial age-estimation technology developed by Cognitec, a German firm that calls itself \u201cthe face-recognition company\u201d.<\/p>\n That system showed bias against sub-Saharan Africans, tending to overpredict the ages of minors, according to an investigation by Lighthouse Reports<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n The UK-based tech monitor Foxglove<\/a> has said these systems relied on \u201cracist bias\u201d and said the government should not use children to test experimental technology.<\/p>\n The Refugee and Migrant Children\u2019s Consortium <\/a>has raised concerns about the technology\u2019s ability to assess children who have undergone difficult journeys. It noted that trauma can \u201cage\u201d a child\u2019s appearance.<\/p>\n The Home Office plans to use the technology alongside checks by immigration officers. A spokesperson said: \u201cAge assessments are a vital tool in maintaining border security. As part of our work to make this process more robust and consistent, we are exploring cutting-edge AI technology to verify migrants\u2019 ages.\u201d<\/p>\n Petra Molnar, who co-founded the advocacy group Migration and Tech Monitor<\/a>, said this was the latest in a series of failed attempts across Europe to implement tech and AI into border policy.<\/p>\n She said previous attempts in Europe to implement AI-powered lie-detection systems for screening refugees had proven to be \u201csnake oil\u201d and did not progress beyond pilot schemes.<\/p>\n She likened the use of facial age-estimation technology to \u201cthe study of skulls and skull shapes\u201d by colonial-era scientists to categorise different ethnic groups, saying that like the discredited 19th-century pseudoscience of phrenology, these systems similarly relied on categorising physical features to determine age.<\/p>\n \u201cThe context really matters here,\u201d said Molnar. \u201cWe know that trauma ages you. We know that malnutrition, dehydration, torture \u2013 even just the journey itself \u2013 has physical impacts on your face, on your body.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s effectively \u2018neo-phrenology\u2019 by categorising people based on physical features,\u201d she said. \u201cRelying on these kind of imperfect tools is not the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n Get in touch<\/p>\n Contact us about this story<\/p>\n The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods:<\/p>\n Secure Messaging in the Guardian app<\/p>\n The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS<\/a>\/Android<\/a>) and go to the menu. Select \u2018Secure Messaging\u2019. <\/p>\n SecureDropIf you can safely use the tor network without being observed or monitored you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform.<\/a><\/p>\n