The UK Will Scan Asylum-Seekers’ Faces for Age Checks—Despite Knowing the Tech Is Flawed
Key takeaways
- This story was produced in partnership with Lighthouse Reports and The Independent.
- The move is believed to be the first time that a so-called facial age estimation (FAE) system has been used in this way.
- An investigation by WIRED and Lighthouse Reports, in collaboration with The Independent, has obtained an internal UK government report detailing its tests of FAE technologies.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Age verification is consuming the internet. From social media bans in Australia to porn restrictions in half of US states, for many having to prove their age to access websites is becoming an everyday requirement. But one of the key technologies underpinning many of these age checks is about to seep into the offline world—with potentially life-changing consequences for people having their age predicted by AI.
This story was produced in partnership with Lighthouse Reports and The Independent.
Starting next year, the British government is planning to introduce facial age estimation—where AI scans your face and suggests how old you are—to help determine the age of asylum seekers arriving at the United Kingdom’s border. The move is believed to be the first time that a so-called facial age estimation (FAE) system has been used in this way. Many asylum seekers arriving in the UK will not have documents proving their age, and if children are incorrectly classed as adults, they can be stripped of some legal protections and placed in adult-only detention centers.