UK immigration watchdog eyes Home Office AI tools used in asylum claims

The UK’s borders watchdog is examining how the Home Office uses generative AI to process asylum claims. The tools in question help caseworkers summarise interviews and search policy, in cases that can decide whether someone gets to stay in the country. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) has asked digital rights nonprofit Open Rights Group (ORG) to share more about the tools. The inspectorate is currently drawing up the list of topics it will inspect next year, ORG campaigner Sara Alsherif told WIRED. Two chatbots inside the asylum system The Home Office has deployed two generative AI tools in asylum casework. Both run on OpenAI’s GPT-4o model and are accessed through Microsoft Azure. The first is the Asylum Policy Search (APS) tool. It gives staff a chat interface for looking up country-specific policy. APS went live for all decision-makers in July 2025. The second is the Asylum Case Summarisation (ACS) tool. It condenses interview transcripts into summaries for caseworkers. ACS reached caseworkers in April 2026. The accuracy numbers moved in the wrong direction During the Home Office’s own pilot evaluation, 9% of ACS summaries were found to be inacc...