







This tech could see vulnerable children seeking asylum in the UK facing a serious threat to their safety at the hands of the UK government.
Home Office knew AI age checks for migrants were flawed – but rolled it out anyway
Exclusive: Government advisers describe the tool as ‘hideously flawed’ amid concern facial age estimation has ‘baked-in racial bias’ – and can wrongly identify a 14-year-old as an adult

AI tool will lead to more child refugees being treated as adults, charity warns
‘Racist bias’ overestimating ages in Home Office’s facial-recognition software will lead to solo children being housed with adults, says Human Rights Network

The UK Will Scan Asylum-Seekers’ Faces for Age Checks—Despite Knowing the Tech Is Flawed
Internal Home Office tests of age-verification technology show the risks of life-altering errors. It’s moving forward anyway.

How We Analyzed AI Used to Guess Asylum Seekers’ Ages
Using a leaked report and NIST data to audit facial age estimation AI for efficacy and bias.

Asylum by Algorithm
The UK has turned to AI to determine the age of asylum seekers, and other countries are likely to follow suit. Our investigation finds the technology is deeply unreliable.

Facial age estimation: Using AI to support initial age decisions (A guide) (accessible)
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First-ever Home Office data reveals hundreds of child refugees wrongly treated as adults, despite expert warnings | Helen Bamber
After years of campaigning, the Home Office has for the first time published its own data confirming that hundreds of child refugees arriving in UK alone are being wrongly treated as adults, with devastating consequences. These children are routinely placed in adult accommodation, immigration detention and even adult prisons.
Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators
More than 70 organizations, including the ACLU, EPIC, and Fight for the Future, say the AI smart glasses feature would endanger abuse victims, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.

Trial Data Reveals Racial Bias in Age Verification Software
New trial data reveals racial bias in age verification software used for social media restrictions. Discover how unreliable these systems really are now.
AI Age Checks Are Here—And They’re Not Fair To Everyone
Research shows that AI age checks misclassify women & Black people as older, raising concerns over bias, safety, and future workplace use.

Google AI Giving Staggeringly Racist “Advice” About Being Alone With Certain Groups of People
Google's AI Overviews feature is showing overtly racist responses about being alone with certain groups of people.

Age Verification Is Locking Trans People Out of the Internet
Experts tell Dia Kayyali and Jasmine Mithani that age verification, sold as a fix for kids’ online safety, expands surveillance and deepens discrimination.

10 (Not So) Hidden Dangers of Age Verification
It’s nearly the end of 2025, and half of the US and the UK now require you to upload your ID or scan your face to watch “sexual content.” A handful of states and Australia now have various

The Age-Verification Trap
Platforms are caught in a dilemma: enforce age restrictions or protect user privacy. How are they navigating this tricky terrain?

Question for ethicists: Is an Expression of Concern enough when authors claim to have trained ML to diagnose autism from facial appearance, using a collection of facial images that were scraped from the Intertubes without niceties like "formal diagnosis" or "consent"? pubpeer.com/publications/F138C3793F91B979…
PubPeer - ASD2-TL∗ GTO: Autism spectrum disorders detection via transf...
pubpeer.comOur statement on the UK gov't's demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification & content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/2026-06-08-uk-surve…