PLANS to use AI to determine the age of young people seeking asylum could see children wrongly sent to adult prisons of detentions centres, a coalition for refugee children warned on Monday.

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium will issue a report this month on the use of facial age estimation to assess the age of those seeking asylum, arguing that the technology must be confined to an advisory role and should not replace the more comprehensive social work assessments.

Announcing the award of a £322,000 contract with Akhter Computers to provide the system, border security and asylum minister Alex Norris claimed that AI technology would ensure “those who game the system are identified, detained and removed without delay, and those who deserve support and protection are given it.”

But the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium co-chair Kamena Dorling has branded the government’s proposals “deeply concerning.”

She warned: “AI cannot account for the factors that can significantly affect a young person’s appearance after fleeing conflict and persecution and undertaking dangerous journeys, including trauma, malnutrition, and exhaustion.”

Consortium member, the Refugee Council’s Kama Petruczenko added: “The government’s own figures already show that hundreds of children are being wrongly treated as adults following flawed visual assessments at the border, with devastating consequences for their safety and wellbeing.

“AI and facial age estimation technology are not a simple or risk-free answer to these longstanding problems.

“There is a real danger that this technology creates a false sense of certainty in decisions that are already extremely difficult to get right. 

“If flawed assessments are simply automated, more children could end up wrongly placed in adult accommodation, detention centres or even prisons.”