UK selects Cognitec for facial age estimation in asylum assessments

The UK government has selected a vendor for facial age estimation. The £322,000 ($433,745) contract begins on June 1, 2026 and runs for three years. The contract award notice lists established British IT provider Akhter Computers Limited as the main contractor, with biometrics services subcontracted to German facial recognition specialist Cognitec.

The award moves facial age estimation from pilot and policy discussions into operational use within the UK’s asylum system. It also places the technology at the center of a contentious debate over migration, children’s rights and the role of AI in government decision-making.

The contract comes as the Home Office formally incorporates facial age estimation into its asylum age-assessment framework. Newly published guidance explains how facial age estimation can be used to support immigration officers making initial decisions about whether undocumented arrivals should be treated as children or adults.

The document outlines how facial age estimation can be used to classify asylum seekers.

“Asylum seekers frequently arrive at the UK border with no official identity documents and so it can sometimes be difficult to know for sure which are children,” it says. “A child might look like an adult when they are not, and vice versa. Adult migrants sometimes claim to be children to prevent their removal and to take advantage of protections designed for minors. Sometimes children say they are adults to avoid being separated from friends. In some cases, a person simply doesn’t know their actual chronological age.”

“If there is reason to doubt someone is the age they say they are, immigration officers must make an initial age decision to determine whether to treat them as a child or an adult. Facial age estimation, or FAE, can help the officials whose job it is to make these important decisions.”

The guidance quotes a November 2025 Home Office policy paper, which stated, “early assessment suggests that facial age estimation is effective and could produce workable results much quicker than other potential methods, such as bone X-rays or MRI scans, and at a fraction of the cost.”

The move comes as the Home Office faces scrutiny over the accuracy of existing age assessment processes. Home Office figures released this month showed that 326 people initially assessed as adults were later found to be children, raising questions about whether AI tools can improve consistency while avoiding new forms of error or bias.

Vendors take bias, accuracy seriously

Efficiency and cost-saving measures are all well and good. And the Home Office promises that FAE would “be used only as a supplementary tool for immigration officers, providing additional information to help them make initial age decisions.”

Nonetheless, the use of biometrics and AI in immigration enforcement has historically attracted significant scrutiny from civil society groups and privacy advocates.

The government appears to have foreseen criticism; the guidance includes a section addressing “misconceptions over how FAE will be used.” It distinguishes facial age estimation from facial recognition — “FAE estimates how old someone is. Facial recognition determines who someone is” — and insists that AI is not replacing human decision-making.

The question that remains is, how much will this assuage those who will see “asylum seekers” and “biometrics” and immediately draw worrying conclusions?

The guidance also acknowledges that “there is evidence in testing data that FAE performance can vary depending on ethnicity, skin tone, gender, place of birth and quality of input image. NIST found that error rates were almost always higher for female faces, although it didn’t find out why as testing was purely on performance rather than how algorithms work.”

“Vendors take bias seriously and commercial FAE technology is trained to be representative of the broadest possible demographic range of potential users.”

Home Office takes different tone in defiant post

Appeals to fairness and technical efficiency, however, lose some of their tang when the same government publishes an article on LinkedIn boasting of “cutting-edge AI tech to curb fake under-18 claims and boost removals and deportations.”

While one hand assures, the other makes aggressive gestures in the direction of “small boat arrivals posing as children.” The UK now sees 111,000 asylum seekers a year, and the issue has become a sore point in the country’s political landscape.

“For too long, adult migrants making false age claims have exploited the system and diverted vital support away from children at risk,” says Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris. “That is why we are rolling out AI technology to put a stop to this, ensuring those who game the system are identified, detained and removed without delay, and those who deserve support and protection are given it.”

“We will continue to do whatever it takes to secure our borders.”

The rhetoric contrasts with recently published Home Office figures showing that hundreds of asylum seekers initially assessed as adults were later determined to be children. Those findings have intensified debate over whether new technologies can reduce errors without creating new risks.

Facial age estimation is being positioned as a way to improve consistency and reduce errors in asylum age assessments. Whether the technology can achieve that while satisfying concerns about bias, transparency and the treatment of vulnerable migrants is likely to determine how broadly it is accepted.

Article Topics

biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  Cognitec  |  facial age estimation (FAE)  |  government purchasing  |  Home Office Biometrics (HOB)  |  procurement