UK Borders Inspector Weighs Review of Home Office AI Asylum Tools

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has asked Open Rights Group for more information about two AI tools the UK Home Office uses in asylum cases, WIRED reported, according to PYMNTS. The inspectorate is drawing up next year's inspection priorities. It has not confirmed an investigation, but it acknowledged concerns about the tools.

The tools are Asylum Case Summarisation, which summarises interview transcripts, and Asylum Policy Search, which finds and summarises country policy information for caseworkers. Documents obtained by Open Rights Group show they run on OpenAI's GPT-4 and Microsoft Foundry. The Home Office began piloting them in late 2024 and estimated that together they save about an hour per case.

The group's report, "Automated Discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment", found that the share of case summaries judged unsuitable for use was significantly higher than the 9% reported in the published pilot evaluation, often because of factual errors. It found no quality control for the policy search summaries.

A Home Office spokesperson said trained caseworkers make asylum decisions and that the tools "cannot be used in isolation and do not make decisions on claims". The department said it monitors performance and has committed to publishing updated evaluations.