UK watchdog may investigate Home Office use of OpenAI technology

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), which monitors the Home Office’s work on borders, immigration, and customs, has asked digital rights group Open Rights Group (ORG) for information about the tools as it sets its inspection priorities, Wired reports. The watchdog says it cannot confirm topics before publishing its annual plan, but acknowledges concerns about AI use and previously found that one tool’s effectiveness and reliability varied.

The Home Office uses Asylum Case Summarisation (ACS) and Asylum Policy Search (APS), built with OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Microsoft Foundry, to summarize interviews and information about countries. The department says the tools only assist trained caseworkers, cannot decide claims on their own, and are monitored. ORG says it found a share of ACS summaries unfit for use that was higher than the published 9 percent error rate, and no quality control for APS; the pilot estimated that using both tools could save about an hour per case.