ORG has called on the government to regulate AI
A report claims AI is secretly being used across the Home Office, reinforcing the so-called hostile environment for immigration.
According to the Open Rights Group (ORG), tasks including the detection of potential sham marriages to determining the age of asylum seekers and checking the contents of phones of new arrivals now involve the use of the technology.
It also identifies the use of AI in border surveillance through live facial recognition, drones and satellites, as well as summarising asylum interviews and country policy information used as evidence in those interviews.
The report, titled Automated Discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment, also highlights the opaque Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases (IPIC) tool, which is used to prioritise and assess immigration cases.
ORG warns that AI is not inherently neutral or accurate and can reproduce existing societal biases and discrimination, particularly when its use is driven by anti-immigration policies and rhetoric.
It also criticises successive governments for allowing AI to be trialled and tested with limited public scrutiny, with officials routinely citing national security when responding to freedom of information requests or redacting disclosures.
The report argues that this approach reflects an ideology that treats complex human cases as technical problems that can be solved through technology.
Raising concerns about the consequences of reducing people to data points, the report draws parallels with the hostile environment policy first envisaged by Theresa May when she was home secretary in 2012.
It states: “Relying on AI to decide who gets to stay here and who gets thrown back into danger is a deeply alarming move.”
ORG has called on the government to regulate AI and prohibit uses that undermine democracy or risk human rights violations, including the use of ChatGPT tools in asylum applications.
The organisation is also seeking greater transparency, stronger freedom of information laws, a narrower definition of national security and a comprehensive public register of government AI tools.
Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy said: “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, what the problems are and how they are being addressed.
“The department has not explained how it will ensure there is accountability when they fail or justified why some of the most vulnerable people, with the least power, should bear the greatest risks.”
Sara Alsherif, a programme manager at Open Rights Group, added:
“Migration is a human phenomenon and experience, not a technical problem that can be fixed by artificial intelligence.
“We urgently need transparency, accountability and strict regulation to restrict how AI is used and to prevent its wider rollout.”
However, the Home Office defended its use of the technology, insisting that AI supports rather than replaces human decision-making in immigration and asylum cases.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Use of artificial intelligence is just one of the tools at our disposal to protect our borders and does not replace or automate the role of human decision-makers.
“Asylum decisions are made by trained caseworkers, with AI tools used only to assist in navigating interview records and policy information.
“They cannot be used in isolation and do not make decisions on claims.
“We regularly monitor the performance of these tools alongside our established quality-assurance processes and have already committed to publishing updated evaluations on their rollout.”
