AI is being tested and trialled on some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in our society.

The use of AI in immigration include: live facial recognition used at borders and to ‘estimate’ the age of children seeking asylum; opaque and unaccountable tools used to summarise highly personal interviews given by people fleeing trauma and persecution; and automated tools claim to determine if marriages are real or entered into to get round immigration restrictions.

These opaque and unaccountable tools are encoding biaas and secrecy into the immigration system.

The Home Office using people seeking asylum as its testing ground without meeting even the minimum standards set by its own regulations and AI Playbook.

ORG is fighting the automation of the hostile environment. We are campaigning for the government to regulate the use of AI by the public sector – and for some uses to be banned outright.

ORG commissioned a legal opinion by Cloisters Chambers’ Robin Allen KC and Dee Masters, and Joshua Jackson of Doughty Street Chambers. It finds that the Home Office’s failure to inform asylum applicants that AI tools are being used in their assessments is likely to be unlawful. Tell your MP to ban the use of AI tools in asylum assessments.