When AI meets global mobility, trust becomes the differentiator

Somewhere in India, late at night, a traveller is asking an AI assistant what documents are needed for a visa. The answer arrives immediately, in a familiar language, without waiting for a call centre to open. It is a small interaction, but it signals a much larger change. By the second half of 2025, roughly one in six people worldwide were using generative AI tools. For many travellers, asking an AI assistant for guidance is quickly becoming as natural as using a search engine or travel app.

In 2025, Indian nationals recorded 32.83 million international departures, 6.3% more than the previous year. The way these journeys begin is also changing. Travellers increasingly use AI to research destinations, compare options and plan their trips.

Naturally, they expect similar convenience when applying for a visa. But visa services are not the same as booking a hotel or ordering a meal. They operate within government systems, handle sensitive personal information and support decisions that belong entirely to sovereign authorities. The important question, therefore, is not simply how much AI can automate. It is how AI can make the journey easier without weakening privacy, accountability or trust.

AI capability to responsible deployment

AI can answer routine questions, organise information, extract details from documents and reduce repetitive administrative work. But automation is not the objective. The real value lies in making a complex and often stressful process clearer and more predictable.

This requires firm boundaries. AI can guide applicants, support employees and present structured information to government officials, but it must not cross into sovereign decision-making. Visa decisions remain entirely with the relevant government authority.

Responsible AI must therefore be designed into the system from the outset, with guardrails that clearly define its purpose, access to information and limitations, along with when human intervention is required and how its outputs can be reviewed.

Making trust work at scale

Responsible AI becomes more complex when deployed across countries, languages and regulatory environments. For instance, we operate 4,275 application centres across 170 countries, serving 71 client governments. As of July 31, we had processed 562.56 million applications and related transactions since inception.

At this scale, introducing an AI tool is only the beginning. The real challenge is applying the same standards of governance, data protection and human oversight across different government requirements, local laws and operating conditions. This is particularly important because AI capability is not always consistent: a system can excel at complex tasks yet make unexpected mistakes on seemingly simple ones.

A co-piloting approach, using controlled test-and-learn cycles rather than a single large-scale transformation, allows new capabilities to be introduced progressively while retaining human oversight.

For instance, the VFS Global GenAI Virtual Assistant is deployed across approximately 1,200 visa routes for more than 45 client governments, it supports 54 languages and handles around 4.5 million interactions each year.

The assistant operates within clearly defined boundaries. It answers questions using only official information published on the relevant internal website and does not search the open internet. Personal information entered by users is detected and deleted, while conversations are not used to train the underlying AI models. It provides information and guidance but does not assess eligibility or predict visa outcomes. When a question falls outside its defined role, applicants can be directed to human assistance.

These safeguards may attract less attention than new AI features, but they are what make the technology suitable for a sensitive and regulated environment. When AI can produce a convincing answer without knowing whether it is correct, controlling its sources and defining its limits become critical design choices. In responsible AI, what a system is prevented from doing can be as important as what it can do.

Using technology to support fair access

Technology can also help make access to visa appointments fairer. High demand appointment systems can be targeted by bots, impersonation and fraudulent booking attempts, making it more difficult for genuine applicants to secure available slots.

Facial match and liveness detection can help appointment systems verify that a booking is being made by a real person and is linked to the intended applicant. This helps protect appointment availability from misuse and supports a fairer booking process.

The purpose of these checks is specific: to strengthen the integrity of the appointment system and help ensure that genuine applicants have a fair opportunity to book. Their value lies not only in preventing misuse, but also in building confidence that technology is being used to create a more secure and equitable applicant experience.

AI can assist the process without making the decision

The same principle applies to document review. Visa applications can include passports, bank statements, employment letters, travel bookings and other supporting documents in different formats and languages. Organising this information can require considerable administrative effort.

Intelligent document processing can extract relevant details, organise them into a structured, fact-based summary and flag documents that may be missing, unreadable or incorrectly categorised. This can reduce repetitive work and present information more clearly for review. The distinction, however, remains important: an AI-generated summary supports the review process; it does not determine the outcome.

Visa officers continue to assess each application in accordance with the relevant government’s requirements. Documents that are unclear or incomplete, and outputs generated with low confidence, require human review.

This is where responsible automation delivers the greatest value. AI can improve efficiency and consistency in administrative tasks, while people retain responsibility for reviewing the information and exercising

judgement. It does not remove human expertise from the process; it allows that expertise to be focused where it matters most.

Reactive processing to proactive mobility

The next stage of AI in global mobility will be less about individual tools and more about how carefully those tools work together. Today, an applicant may search for visa information on one platform, submit documents using another, book an appointment elsewhere and repeatedly provide similar information at different stages.

A more connected journey could identify gaps before an application is submitted, provide guidance at the moment an applicant becomes confused and reduce the need to resubmit information that has already been submitted earlier.

Each capability could move the experience from correcting problems after they occur to helping prevent avoidable problems earlier. Greater capability, however, requires stronger safeguards. Each system must have a clearly defined role, and uncertain or low-confidence outputs should be referred for human review.

The future belongs to accountable intelligence

The next phase of AI in global mobility will not be determined by who adopts the newest model first. It will be determined by who can use the technology responsibly across different countries, legal systems, and government requirements, while maintaining security, human oversight and clear accountability. For governments and their technology partners, responsible AI must therefore be treated as an operating principle, not simply as a policy or compliance exercise.

This means using AI where it genuinely reduces confusion, improves consistency or removes repetitive work. It also means recognising where AI should not be used, particularly when information is uncertain, an individual may be materially affected or a decision requires sovereign authority and human judgement.

The best measure of progress will not be how much of the human process technology can replace. It will be whether technology makes the journey clearer for applicants, helps people make better-informed decisions and strengthens confidence in the institutions responsible for global mobility. In the age of AI, technical capability will become increasingly common. Trust will remain the real differentiator.

(The author is Global Head – Information Services, VFS Global. Views are personal.)