On Friday, Parliament and Council negotiators reached a provisional agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act. This regulation aims to ensure that fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability are protected from high risk AI, while boosting innovation and making Europe a leader in the field. The rules establish obligations for AI based on its potential risks and level of impact.

Banned applications

Recognising the potential threat to citizens’ rights and democracy posed by certain applications of AI, the co-legislators agreed to prohibit:

• biometric categorisation systems that use sensitive characteristics (e.g. political, religious, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, race);
• untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases;
• emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions;
• social scoring based on social behaviour or personal characteristics;
• AI systems that…