AI use has become quite common. This carries various risks. Our firm Thaxted Legal is addressing the common problems that occur in the immigration law field. According to the Guardian article Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, Upper tribunal judge said when unable to find document cited in case and claims it is ‘analogous to relying on bogus evidence’
A senior judge has accused the Home Office of relying on “AI hallucinated” information to refuse an asylum claim. The case relates to a Moroccan woman and her child who fled her country after experiencing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape. The woman claimed asylum on the basis of fears that she would be killed by her husband: a powerful, previously convicted criminal.
The Home Office refused her case, citing evidence from a supposedly independent and authoritative document known as a country policy information note (CPIN), which they said confirmed that Morocco would be safe for her. The document could not be found, although its existence was relied upon by a judge who rejected her appeal against the Home Office’s refusal decision in an immigration court known as the first-tier tribunal.
Use of AI by immigration lawyers
Similarly to Home Office, immigration lawyers are found to use non-existent or fake AI generated legal submissions such as in this case of Hamid (UT 2026).
1. Legal professionals are obliged to ensure that legal arguments which are presented to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal are factually and legally accurate. Those who cite false cases fail to comply with that professional obligation and waste the time of the Tribunal.
2. A solicitor or other legal professional who delegates their work to another fee-earner remains responsible for the supervision of their work and for ensuring its accuracy. Such supervisors must ensure that fee-earners under their supervision are aware of the dangers of using non-specialist Artificial Intelligence (AI) for legal research and drafting. Failures to do so, or to undertake appropriate checks on the drafting of fee-earners is likely to result in a referral to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) or other professional body. A supervisor who fails to ensure that the work of a more junior fee-earner does not contain false cases or citations is likely to be more culpable than a lawyer who fails to ensure that his own work is free from such “hallucinations”.
3. The claim form by which judicial review is sought in the Upper Tribunal has now been amended so as to require a legal representative to confirm by a statement of truth that any authority cited within the form or in any documents appended to it (a) exists; (b) may be located using the citation provided; and (c) supports the proposition of law for which it is cited. Other forms and directions are to be similarly amended. A legal representative who signs such a statement in a case in which false authorities are cited should ordinarily expect to be referred to their regulatory body.
4. Uploading confidential documents into an open-source AI tool, such as ChatGPT, is to place this information on the internet in the public domain, and thus to breach client confidentiality and waive legal privilege, and any such conduct might itself warrant referral to the SRA and should, in any event, be referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Use of AI by visa applicants
Equally or even more common use of AI is by the visa applicants, who read the AI generated information as the source for their legal research and preparation of immigration visa applications. AI generates information from various sources and it requires careful and detailed checks before relying on it. Some of the information may be incorrect because someone published wrong information that was then generated by AI. Sometimes the information might have been correct at the time it was written but the law has changed since that time. There are many reasons why AI generated information can be incorrect and someone with no or limited immigration knowledge will not spot it.