Open Rights Group (ORG) has carried out a six month investigation into two generative AI tools, being used by the Home Office in every asylum decision. These are the Asylum Case Summarisation (ACS) tool and the Asylum Policy Search (APS) tools.

ORG, with the help of MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Carla Denyer, has been trying to uncover how these tools have been developed, checked and used, as well as whether the government’s efficiency claims stand up.

We have found that:

• Asylum claimants continue not to be told when AI is used to summarise their case and country information.
• Error rates for the ACS from the dip sampling are higher than the pilot testing.
• There is no quality assurance for generated AI summaries from ACS.
• There is no quality check control for the generated text from the APS tool.
• Just 0.3% of total generated summaries between April-July were checked by Home Office Subject Matter Experts (SME).
• There are no plans for an independent audit of the system.
• The tools have not been added to Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard Hub.
• There has been no effort to bring the use of the tools into line with the AI Playbook for the UK Government.

The Home Office has refused to provide key information including about staff training, the prompts being used, and how the tools are being tested for quality assurance. Their replies have been at times self-contradictory.

Our findings suggest that these tools have been rolled out without proper testing, quality assurance and training. This careless approach could have catastrophic consequences for those people whose future is in the hands of Home Office decision-making.

Between March and August 2026, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP and Carla Denyer MP tabled eleven written questions and two letters to the minister. The ministerial answers, two ministerial letters (Alex Norris MP, 22 June 2026; Rt Hon Anna Turley MP, 7 August 2026) and six FOI responses are the sources for this briefing.

The Home Office uses two AI tools in asylum casework, both built on a large language model (GPT-4o via Azure AI Foundry).

• The Asylum Case Summarisation (ACS) tool summarises asylum interview transcripts for decision-makers.

• The Asylum Policy Search (APS) tool is a chat-style interface for searching country policy information.

Both generate new text rather than retrieving existing text; they can filter, reframe or omit facts relevant to a decision.

APS was fully rolled out to all asylum decision-makers from July 2025. ACS was rolled out to all asylum caseworkers from April 2026.

The Home Office’s own pilot evaluation of ACS, published 29 April 2025, found 9% of the summaries it produced were inaccurate or had missing information and had to be removed from the pilot. In addition, 23% of caseworkers were not fully confident in ACS output and 5% were not confident in APS accuracy.

In March 2026, a legal opinion commissioned by ORG concluded that Home Office’s failure to follow the UK AI Playbook and to align with the domestic regulations and international obligations is likely to be unlawful. It highlighted potential breaches of UK GDPR if applicants are denied the opportunity to correct inaccurate summaries of their personal data. The tools may not meet the Public Sector Equality Duty nor the standards set out in the AI Playbook for the UK Government. The findings of ORG’s investigation support these assertions.

The public record on these tools is inconsistent. Ministerial correspondence and responses to FOI requests give conflicting accounts of the training given to caseworkers, of the maturity of the tools, and of the testing carried out on them.

The prompts that govern how the summarisation tool works have not been published.

Data protection impact assessments have been disclosed only in redacted form.

No independent inspection of these tools has taken place.

We are calling the Home Office to:

1. Suspend the use of both AI tools in asylum casework and implement mitigation measures for affected asylum applicants.
2. Commission an independent evaluation and audit of both tools’ accuracy in live use, and publish the findings.
3. Request that the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) open an inspection into these tools.
4. Ensure there is no use of AI in the asylum decision-making process without proper consultation, adherence to domestic regulations and international obligations, and full alignment with human rights principles.