Automated language recognition, also known as dialect recognition, is being explored as a way to verify asylum seekers' claims during asylum application interviews. Several EU Member States have been experimenting with these technologies, or planning to further develop language analysis to be used in asylum procedures. According to a 2022 report by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), seven Member States (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Romania, Finland and Sweden) have used or tested language analysis as a tool to establish asylum seekers' country of origin. In a 2023 report, the EUAA mentioned a project to establish a "common European platform to identify the country of origin of applicants through language assessment," including a first-line AI language detection tool and a second-line pool of language analysts.
The accuracy and ethical implications of these tools have been strongly questioned, due to the likelihood of increasing bias and leading to wrongful decision-making in asylum procedures. This can have serious consequences where individuals country of origin is wrongly determined, their risk of persecution may be wrongfully dismissed, or they may be wrongfully led into an accelerated border procedure, with a higher likelihood of their asylum claim being rejected.