It is age verification internet consumption. From social media bans to porn restrictions in Australia Half of the US statesfor many, they have to prove their age to access websites daily requirement. But one of the key technologies behind many of these age checks is about to leak into the offline world – with potentially life-changing consequences for people whose ages are predicted by AI.
From next year, the British government plans to introduce facial age estimation – where artificial intelligence scans your face and suggests how old you are— To help determine the age of asylum seekers arriving at the UK border. This step is believed to be the first time a system called facial age estimation (FAE) has been used in this way. Many asylum seekers arriving in the UK will not have documents to prove their age, and if children are wrongly classified as adults, they may be denied some legal protections and placed in adult-only detention centres.
Research by WIRED and Lighthouse ReportsIn collaboration with The Independent, it obtained an internal UK government report detailing trials of FAE technologies. It shows that the systems regularly mistake children as adults and contain serious bias problems that directly affect the largest group of migrants subject to age assessments in 2025, according to Home Office data. The investigation raises questions about the effectiveness of the technology and whether it should be used in such high-risk scenarios.
