Home Office criticised after AI hallucination led to rejected asylum claim

A senior judge in the Upper Tribunal (UT) has criticised the Home Office for relying on non-existent information, potentially generated by artificial intelligence (AI), to reject an asylum claim. The case involves a Moroccan woman and her child fleeing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, whose claim was refused based on a supposed country policy information note (CPIN) claiming Morocco was safe.

During the appeal, the UT discovered that no such published policy document existed, with the judge noting the refusal letter displayed hallmarks of AI hallucination and describing the reliance on non-existent material as analogous to using bogus evidence.

The Home Office later produced a different, unpublished internal document that had not been disclosed during legal proceedings. Far from confirming safety, this internal report revealed that Morocco made exemptions for 40,000 child marriages in 2018 and failed to explicitly criminalise marital rape, exposing reporting women to potential prosecution. The judge ruled the reliance on the unlocated document constituted a serious procedural irregularity in the asylum decision.

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