On 1 August 2024, the European AI Act entered into force. In this article, you can read more about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) practices that are banned as of February 2025.
Why are AI practices being banned?
AI has many useful applications, but this technology can also be misused for manipulation, exploitation and social control. The European AI Act seeks to ban such practices to protect citizens.
What will be banned?
We summarised the AI practices that will be banned as of February 2025:
- Manipulative or Deceptive AI Systems. While AI systems can help people make targeted and informed decisions, there is also a risk. AI techniques can influence people to make choices they would not normally make. Think of using audio, visual and video material for instance, that they cannot consciously perceive. Therefore, AI systems that use subconscious techniques and AI systems that purposefully manipulate or mislead are prohibited. AI systems that exploit vulnerabilities – such as age, disability or socioeconomic situation – to influence people are also prohibited.
- AI systems for ‘social scoring’. This involves AI systems judging people based on their social behaviour or personal characteristics. This can cause problems such as discrimination and exclusion of certain groups.
- AI-based predicted risk assessments for crime. AI can be used to assist in predicting potential crimes. However, it is important to note it should be based on facts, related to criminal activity. AI systems that predict crimes based solely on profiling or assessment of personality traits and characteristics are prohibited.
- Biometric categorisation. Systems that categorise individuals based on biometric data (such as facial images and fingerprints) to infer race, political views, union membership, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation are prohibited. This prohibition protects the privacy and fundamental rights of individuals. Exceptions only apply to lawful labelling or filtering of lawfully obtained biometric datasets, in the field of law enforcement.
- The use of AI systems for real-time remote biometric identification in public places. This will be prohibited except when strictly necessary for specific and delineated situations. Examples include searching for victims of kidnapping or missing persons, preventing imminent threats to people’s lives, and tracking suspects of certain very serious crimes. The use of these should be provided by national legislation with a legal basis detailing the conditions.
- Other prohibited practices. Other AI practices banned from February 2025 include emotion recognition in the workplace and education. Untargeted scrapping of facial images from the Internet or camera images to create or supplement facial recognition databases is also prohibited. More information can be found in Article 5 of the AI Act on the EUR-Lex website. The European Commission is still issuing guidance on the practical implementation of the bans.
What does this mean for my organisation?
Organisations must identify the banned AI systems they use so that they can phase them out. This must be done by February 2025. If this is not done in time, regulators can impose high fines.
Series of articles
The AI Act is a comprehensive law with many different provisions and considerations. For instance, what AI systems are allowed? We will keep you informed via this website, nldigitalgovernment.nl.
Questions
Do you have questions about implementing the regulation and what it means for your government organisation? Ask them to the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) at: ai-verordening@minbzk.nl. If you are not a government organisation, we would like to refer you to Business.gov.nl.
More information on AI Act
For more information and an explanation on what it entails, please visit our topic page AI Act for a summary and useful links.
