Wired · United Kingdom · Donald Trump · Ars Technica
The UK government first shipped its aims to tap face age estimation alongside border staff judgments to assess migrants
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Over the past five years, AI face scans have emerged as a key component of controversial online age verification programs, as lawmakers have mandated social media platforms, porn websites, and some retailers check their users’ ages.
Key facts
- For female Sub-Saharan Africans, the age that the system guessed was off by an average of 4.6 years, meaning that a 13.5-year-old girl could be assessed as an 18-year-old adult
- The leaked Home Office report produced in April 2025, which was completed before the government purchased face-scanning technology, details the testing of seven FAE algorithms against more than 2.5
- 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
- On average, that system also tended to predict that a 17-year-old would be over 18, and it performed worse on females
Summary
Age verification is consuming the Internet. 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. 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. The findings also come as the second Trump administration and governments around the world increasingly adopt anti-migrant policies while spending billions on surveillance technology that is often deployed against vulnerable people who have little knowledge of its use, how it works, or ways they can challenge it. The leaked Home Office document obtained by Lighthouse Reports largely details the “best” performing of seven facial age estimation algorithms that the department tested last year, although it does not directly name the companies behind them.