UK Home Office May Face Investigation Over Use of OpenAI Tools

A UK government watchdog is considering an investigation into the Home Office’s use of generative AI tools to process asylum applications, WIRED has learned. The potential probe follows lawmakers and researchers publicly questioning the tools’ accuracy and the government’s secrecy around their use.

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), which monitors the Home Office’s management of borders, immigration, and customs, has asked digital rights nonprofit Open Rights Group (ORG) to share more information on the tools as it draws up plans for the topics it will inspect next year, campaigner Sara Alsherif tells WIRED. ORG’s findings come from a six-month investigation into the tools, which involved 11 parliamentary questions, two ministerial letters, and 10 public records requests that attempt to pry details from the Home Office, which has withheld details on the tools.

The ICIBI tells WIRED it cannot confirm what topics are under active consideration before it publishes its annual inspection priorities, but it says it is aware of concerns about the use of AI tools and pointed to its findings last year that one of the tool’s “effectiveness and reliability were varied.”

“Asylum decisions are made by trained caseworkers, with AI tools used only to assist in navigating interview records and policy information. They cannot be used in isolation and do not make decisions on claims,” a Home Office spokesperson tells WIRED in an email. “We regularly monitor the performance of these tools alongside our established quality-assurance processes, and have already committed to publishing updated evaluations on their roll out.”

“We’re dealing with people’s lives. We’re talking about people that have faced some of the worst circumstances, and we’re meant to be making decisions based on facts and on understanding harm,” Labour backbench MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy tells WIRED. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate that machines are doing that.”