What this page is for
It helps users produce a concrete artifact, checklist, or decision note instead of only reading generic advice. The page is written for people comparing options and preparing a real workflow.
Risk screening
Prohibited AI Practices Under the EU AI Act
Some AI use cases should be stopped before a normal product launch checklist begins. This page gives product teams a plain-English way to spot practices that may fall into the EU AI Act prohibited category.
Disclaimer: This guide is for general operational planning. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace review by qualified counsel for a specific product, market, or customer deployment.
Fast stop signals
| Practice to screen | Why it needs immediate review |
|---|---|
| Manipulative or deceptive AI patterns | The system may materially distort a person's behavior or decision-making in a way that can cause significant harm. |
| Exploiting vulnerable people | The feature targets or takes advantage of age, disability, social situation, or economic vulnerability. |
| Social scoring | The system ranks people or groups in a way that affects treatment across contexts or creates unjustified disadvantage. |
| Predictive policing based only on profiling | The system estimates criminal risk mainly from profiling, personality traits, or characteristics instead of objective, verifiable facts. |
| Untargeted facial image scraping | The product builds or expands facial recognition databases from broad web or CCTV scraping. |
| Workplace or education emotion inference | The system infers emotions in work or education settings, except for limited medical or safety reasons. |
| Sensitive biometric categorization | The system uses biometrics to infer sensitive traits such as political opinions, religion, sex life, race, or trade-union membership. |
| Real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces | Law-enforcement use in public spaces is tightly restricted and should not be treated as a normal SaaS feature. |
Product triage questions
- Could the AI pressure, trick, or steer a user without the user understanding what is happening?
- Does the system make or influence decisions about people outside the original context where data was collected?
- Does the feature involve biometric identification, biometric categorization, emotion recognition, or facial image collection?
- Does the system affect vulnerable users, children, workers, students, applicants, tenants, borrowers, or people seeking public services?
- Would a reasonable reviewer describe the feature as surveillance, scoring, profiling, or behavioral control?
What to do when a signal appears
- Pause the launch path for that use case.
- Write the intended purpose, user group, data categories, and real-world decision impact.
- Separate marketing claims from actual system behavior.
- Ask whether a safer, non-biometric, non-scoring, or human-led workflow can meet the product goal.
- Get specialist review before collecting production data or enabling the feature for EU users.
Official sources
Last reviewed: July 3, 2026.
- EU AI Act Article 5: prohibited AI practices
- EU AI Act Article 2: scope
- European Commission: AI Act regulatory framework
Updated review note
Review and responsible-use note
Prohibited AI Practices Under the EU AI Act is maintained as a practical page for AI compliance self-assessment. Use the result to organize internal review, collect evidence, and decide when a qualified legal or compliance specialist should review the system.
What it does not replace
These tools provide operational checklists and first-pass triage, not legal advice, certification, or a guarantee of EU AI Act compliance.
How to verify the result
The highest-risk scenarios on this site are framed as compliance reviews, not as instructions to build or deploy sensitive AI systems. Useful references include EU AI Act official text and European Commission AI Act overview.
Practical value note
How this page supports the site
Prohibited AI Practices Under the EU AI Act gives visitors context about AI Compliance Kit, the workflow boundaries, and how the site's AI compliance review pages should be used. It supports trust by explaining purpose, limitations, contact paths, and review expectations.
Who this is for
Prohibited AI Practices Under the EU AI Act is written for founders, product owners, compliance teams, and operators preparing AI systems for review. It assumes the visitor wants to complete a practical task, not browse a decorative landing page.
What to save
The useful result should be a checklist, report, policy draft, questionnaire, or review note that can be copied, downloaded, printed, compared, or used as a next-step working document.
What to check
The output is an operational preparation aid. It should be reviewed against the actual system, data flow, jurisdiction, and qualified legal or compliance advice before production use. Keep the original source material and record the assumptions used for the generated result.
Use this page to understand the site before relying on any generated output or publishing a changed file, policy, or technical configuration. If the result affects a public page, customer-facing workflow, policy decision, or uploaded file, review one sample manually before repeating the workflow in bulk.