3.2 — Prohibited AI Practices (Article 5)
Article 5 of the EU AI Act defines AI practices that are entirely prohibited due to the unacceptable risks they pose to fundamental rights, safety, and democratic values. These prohibitions are the first to take effect, becoming enforceable on February 2, 2025.
| # | Practice | Description | Exceptions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Subliminal Manipulation | AI deploying subliminal techniques beyond a person's consciousness to materially distort behavior, causing or likely to cause significant harm. | None |
| 2 | Exploitation of Vulnerabilities | AI exploiting vulnerabilities of specific groups due to age, disability, or social/economic situation to materially distort behavior causing significant harm. | None |
| 3 | Social Scoring (Public Authorities) | AI evaluating or classifying individuals based on social behavior or personality characteristics, leading to detrimental treatment disproportionate or unrelated to the original context. | None |
| 4 | Predictive Policing (Individual-Level) | AI predicting individual criminal behavior based solely on profiling or personality traits, without objective, verifiable facts linked to criminal activity. | Systems that support human assessment based on objective facts are allowed |
| 5 | Untargeted Facial Scraping | Scraping facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create or expand facial recognition databases. | None |
| 6 | Emotion Recognition (Workplace/Education) | AI inferring emotions of individuals in workplace and educational settings. | Safety or medical purposes (e.g., detecting fatigue in safety-critical roles) |
| 7 | Biometric Categorization (Sensitive Attributes) | AI categorizing individuals based on biometric data to infer sensitive attributes (race, political opinions, sexual orientation, religious beliefs). | Lawfully acquired biometric data used in law enforcement for filtering purposes |
| 8 | Real-Time Remote Biometric ID (Public Spaces) | Real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement. | Narrowly: search for specific serious crime victims/missing persons, prevention of imminent terrorist threat, locating/identifying suspects of specific serious crimes — all require judicial authorization |
Prohibited AI practices were the FIRST provisions to become enforceable — as of February 2, 2025. Organizations must have already discontinued any prohibited practices. Penalties for violations are the highest under the Act: up to 35 million EUR or 7% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher.
Note that 'social scoring' is only prohibited when performed by or on behalf of public authorities. Private sector loyalty programs and credit scoring are not banned under this provision, though they may be subject to other regulations. Also, real-time biometric identification has narrow law enforcement exceptions that always require judicial authorization.