The UK Home Office uses Asylum Case Summarisation and Asylum Policy Search, tools built on OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Microsoft Foundry, to assist with asylum case processing.
A government watchdog is considering an investigation; researchers have raised concerns about summary accuracy, while Open Rights Group says the policy-search summaries have no quality control.
How is technology used?
These tools are based on technology from OpenAI and are used for two main tasks: compiling summaries of applicants’ interviews and searching for information on the countries of origin of people seeking asylum. The ministry’s goal was to reduce the time it takes to process each case by about an hour, thus helping to decongest the backlog.
Doubts about the accuracy
The Open Rights Group conducted a six-month investigation and concluded that these systems are more flawed than the ministry has officially admitted. Specifically, the investigation reports that the percentage of summaries deemed unsuitable for use is significantly higher than the 9% initially stated by the ministry. In addition, according to the researchers, there is no quality control mechanism for the information collected.
Last July, the reliability of these tools was at the center of a legal dispute, when a British court accused the Home Office of rejecting an asylum application based on a document generated by artificial intelligence and containing incorrect information.
Lack of transparency
Concerns are heightened by the fact that asylum seekers are not informed about when and how this technology is being used in their cases. At the same time, the specific tools are not registered in the country's public algorithmic transparency register, while the data protection authority is already investigating the ministry's refusal to disclose details about the training of staff in their use.
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The Ministry of the Interior insists that final decisions on asylum are made exclusively by trained officials and that technology is only an auxiliary tool, without having the final say.
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