For people seeking asylum, the process usually involves registration, an interview, and review by government caseworkers. Decisions on granting asylum have traditionally been made by human officials, who may rely on forms, guidance, and other assessment frameworks. Those tools remain within a human-led process.
Now, the systems that assess need, verify identity, and decide what appears urgent are beginning to use artificial intelligence. In the United Kingdom’s system for granting asylum to refugees, for example, AI tools that are being tested summarize interview transcripts and bring relevant policy information to caseworkers. Even in that limited role, they become part of how claims for asylum are read and processed before human caseworkers make their final decisions.
Discussing a future where AI controls us may be unrealistic. What matters more is the quieter present, in which AI and other systems built around data are being gradually folded into the usual routines. These tools are usually presented as ways to improve efficiency, and sometimes they do. In refugee systems, though, speed is only part of the story. The larger concerns are how institutions define vulnerability, notice urgency, see and acknowledge detailed differences among refugees’ needs and constraints, recognize personal contexts, and determine which cases are treated as priorities.
The U.K. pilot programs that are testing these AI tools offer an early glimpse of that change. The tools were introduced to help staff review interview material and retrieve policy information more quickly, not to replace human officers, and the U.K.’s Home Office found time savings in both tasks. However, the same evaluation also pointed to some limits, as some summaries were inaccurate or incomplete, which can affect how cases are read and handled by human caseworkers. Furthermore, wider or deeper effects on decision-making may not yet be visible, since the findings come from small-scale trials rather than sustained use. And a recent legal opinion, commissioned by the U.K. nonprofit Open Rights Group, found that some aspects of the government’s use of AI in these refugee cases is likely unlawful.
To understand the kind of system AI is entering, it helps to look at refugee assistance in Jordan. For years, decisions on how to distribute aid there have relied in part on a tool called the Vulnerability Assessment Framework, or VAF, which helps agencies assess and compare household vulnerability — that is, how vulnerable a family is based on factors such as income, debt, health, housing, and caregiving burdens. VAF is not an AI tool. But it is the kind of structured decision system into which newer AI tools are being incorporated, one that organizes humanitarian priorities through formal categories of need.
These tools are usually presented as ways to improve efficiency, and sometimes they do. In refugee systems, though, speed is only part of the story.
The framework uses indicators to build structured household profiles, and those profiles help guide targeting of aid and programming. Once vulnerability is translated into such a framework, some forms of hardship may become easier to register and rank, while others may become harder to see. What fits the categories is easier to prioritize. What does not fit may be harder to act on, even when it remains urgent. This is where a technical framework starts to have broader consequences.
The concerns about AI being integrated into these tools are no longer premature or too early to discuss. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, recently released its AI strategy, suggesting that these tools are moving beyond peripheral experimentation. The agency describes AI as part of its work on protection and service delivery, including refugee status determination, interview transcription, access to services in multiple languages, and the analysis of community feedback. This shows that the technology is moving closer to the day-to-day work through which refugees are identified, assisted, and guided.
The shift is also visible in refugee-facing services. The Associated Press reported that the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, has been testing AI chatbots through its Signpost platform, which provides displaced people with practical information in multiple languages. This is a different point in the humanitarian process from asylum triage or vulnerability assessment, but it still shapes how refugees find and navigate aid and services, making information part of how access is shaped in practice.
It also brings a different set of risks. If the chatbot is unaware of rapid changes to on-the-ground conditions, the result could be information that is both wrong and dangerous. And when power supplies, internet access, or communication devices fail, access to the tool can disappear at the very moment when people need help the most. The IRC seems to recognize some concerns, as the AP reported that more complex or sensitive questions are referred to human staff.
To say that humanitarian decisions about refugees increasingly begin inside the systems that sort, verify, and guide before any final judgment is made is not to say that digital systems should be abandoned. Governments and humanitarian agencies are under pressure to process more claims and deliver more aid with limited staff and money. Speed matters. Fraud prevention matters. Coordination matters. But the gains from using new technology do not remove the harder questions that underlie them. Refugee governance has never been only an administrative task. It is also about how institutions recognize people in moments of need, and what gets lost when complex lives must first be translated into categories before they can be acted on.
What matters is what happens when these AI tools enter systems that already decide what counts, what can be verified, and what can move quickly. The stakes are in the quieter moments when a category, a score, or a verification step starts to stand in for the life it is meant to serve.
Mona Hedaya is a research fellow at the Center of Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha, Qatar. Her work focuses on forced displacement, humanitarian policy and practice, peacebuilding, and international development, with a particular focus on the Arab world.