Open Rights Group (ORG) released a report titled Automated Discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment, alleging that Artificial Intelligence has been embedded across the Home Office in near-total secrecy to reinforce what the group terms a hostile environment for immigration. The technology is reportedly used for tasks ranging from detecting potential sham marriages and determining the age of asylum seekers to checking the contents of phones belonging to new arrivals. Furthermore, the report details AI use for border surveillance via live facial recognition and AI-powered drones and satellites, and for summarizing asylum interviews and country policy information used as evidence.
The Home Office utilizes tools such as the Asylum Case Summarisation (ACS) and Asylum Policy Search (APS), which are built on OpenAI’s 2023 GPT-4 large language model and Microsoft Foundry, to summarize transcripts and country information. ORG found that the percentage of summaries generated by the ACS deemed not fit for use due to factual errors or misrepresentations is significantly higher than the 9 percent error rate calculated in the pilot evaluation. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) has asked ORG to share more information on these tools as it plans future inspections.
A Home Office spokesperson stated that the use of artificial intelligence "does not replace or automate the role of human decision-makers" and that "Asylum decisions are made by trained caseworkers, with AI tools used only to assist in navigating interview records and policy information." Labour backbench MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy questioned the department's transparency, stating, "In spite of questions and requests, the Home Office has been reluctant to publish the documents that would explain how AI is used in asylum processing." ORG is calling on the government to regulate AI and ban uses that risk human rights violations, such as the use of ChatGPT tools in asylum applications, while also demanding a robust public register of government AI tools.
Sara Alsherif, a programme manager at ORG, stated, "Migration is a human phenomenon and experience, not a technical problem that can be fixed by artificial intelligence." A UK judge previously accused the Home Office of citing an "AI hallucinated" document when refusing an asylum claim for a Moroccan woman and her child.
