Glossary · AI Act
Prohibited AI Practices
The AI uses banned outright under Article 5 of the AI Act, applicable since 2 February 2025.
Explained in depth: AI Act overview
Article 5 prohibits a closed list of AI practices considered incompatible with EU fundamental rights: subliminal or purposefully manipulative techniques that materially distort behaviour and cause significant harm; exploitation of vulnerabilities due to age, disability, or social or economic situation; social scoring leading to detrimental treatment; predicting criminal behaviour based solely on profiling or personality traits; untargeted scraping of facial images to build recognition databases; emotion recognition in workplaces and schools (with narrow safety and medical exceptions); certain biometric categorisation inferring sensitive attributes; and real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces for law enforcement, subject to narrow exceptions. These prohibitions were the first part of the AI Act to apply, from 2 February 2025, and carry the act's highest penalty tier: up to EUR 35 million or 7% of global annual turnover.
Why it matters
Some prohibited practices sound exotic, but emotion recognition at work and vulnerability-exploiting design patterns appear in commercial products today. Screening your AI inventory against the Article 5 list is a short exercise with the highest possible stakes.