‘Bogus’ information obtained by ‘AI hallucination’ may have been used by the Home Office in an asylum case in what would be ‘an extremely serious failing’, a senior tribunal judge has said.
The supposed evidence related to a document about conditions in Morocco, which officials said was safe for a woman and her children to be returned.
An Upper Tier tribunal is ongoing to decide the woman’s fate.
She and her child fled the North African country after experiencing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape, it is claimed.
The woman claimed asylum on the basis of fears that she would be killed by her husband: a powerful, previously convicted criminal, The Guardian reported.
In a first-tier immigration tribunal, the Home Office argued she should be returned citing a ‘country policy information note’, known as a CPIN, a supposedly ‘independent and authoritative document’, stating the country was safe.
Lawyers for the woman appealed to the Upper Tribunal where a judge said: ‘It appears that no such CPIN has ever existed.’
The judge, sitting on July 14, said: ‘No such document has been located in the public domain and moreover the Home Office’s country policy and information team has been unable to confirm its existence.’
An immigration judge said the Home Office sent a letter bearing hallmarks ‘consistent with AI’
The judge, who has not been named, said a Home Office letter refusing the woman’s asylum claim ‘bears hallmarks consistent with the use of artificial intelligence’.
He added: ‘It may therefore transpire that references to country information note Morocco July 2021 in that letter are a result of an AI ‘hallucination’.
‘If so that would represent an extremely serious failing on the part of the respondent [the Home Office].’
In further hugely critical comments, the judge added that relying on a document that did not exist was ‘analogous to relying on bogus evidence’.
He also hit out at ‘procedural irregularity’.
The Home Office were unable to find the document or confirm its existence when challenged by reporters.
The only document the Home Office produced to journalists was a piece of unpublished internal guidance known as a country information note (CIN).
No CPIN has been published on Morocco since 2017, it is understood.
The CIN, not disclosed during the migration proceedings so far, does not conclude that Morocco is a safe country for the forcible return of women such as the one appealing against the decision.
The Guardian said the CIN states that in 2018, 40,000 child marriages were granted, one-fifth of the total marriages that year.
The document also adds that Morocco’s laws do not explicitly criminalise marital rape and that women who report this may be criminalised for engaging in sex outside marriage if they are disbelieved by the authorities.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘The Home Secretary is restoring order and control to our asylum system by removing incentives drawing illegal migrants to the UK and ramping up removals of those with no right to be on British soil.
‘We keep our asylum system under constant review. Claims are always considered on their individual merits and based on the latest evidence to ensure only those in genuine need are granted UK protection.’
The woman’s case continues.
