Upper Tribunal judge accuses Home Office of ‘AI hallucinated’ evidence in asylum refusal

A senior judge in the UK’s Upper Tribunal has accused the Home Office of relying on fabricated information, potentially generated by artificial intelligence, to refuse an asylum claim. The ruling centres on a case involving a Moroccan woman and her child, who fled forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape, fearing for their lives. The Home Office had rejected their application by citing a Country Policy Information Note (CPIN) dated July 2021, which purportedly confirmed that Morocco was safe for her return.

In a decision delivered on 14 July, the judge stated that no such CPIN could be located in the public domain and that the Home Office’s country policy and information team was unable to confirm its existence. The judge described the reliance on the missing document as “analogous to relying on bogus evidence” and identified it as a serious procedural irregularity. The refusal letter, the judge noted, bore “hallmarks consistent with the use of artificial intelligence,” suggesting the reference to the non-existent document may have been an AI ‘hallucination’.

The case had previously been heard in the first-tier tribunal, where a different judge had rejected the woman’s appeal against the initial refusal. However, upon lodging a further appeal to the Upper Tribunal, the discrepancy regarding the evidence came to light. The judge in the Upper Tribunal remarked that it appeared no such CPIN had ever existed, noting that no CPIN on Morocco had been published since 2017.

Following the judicial criticism, the Home Office initially provided a link to an archive where the document was not found. It subsequently produced an unpublished internal Country Information Note (CIN) that contradicted the safety assertions made in the original refusal letter. The internal document, which was never disclosed to the court during legal proceedings, indicates that Morocco’s laws do not explicitly criminalise marital rape and that women reporting it may face criminalisation for engaging in sex outside marriage if disbelieved by authorities.

The unpublished CIN also highlights that in 2018, exemptions were granted for 40,000 child marriages, representing one-fifth of total marriages that year. During the course of the case, the Home Office’s references shifted from the internal CIN to the authoritative CPIN. Home Office sources stated they were able to provide additional information about the case that the judge had requested, while a spokesperson reiterated the department’s commitment to reviewing claims on their individual merits.