What AI practices does the EU AI Act ban?
Article 5 bans a short list of harmful uses — social scoring, covert manipulation, emotion recognition at work or school, sensitive biometric categorisation, and untargeted face scraping. Almost no small business using a writing assistant or shop chatbot touches these. Read the list so you can be sure.
Answered by GlassBots' AI assistant — not a person, not legal advice. We review new questions and publish them as permanent answers.
Article 5 bans a short list of harmful uses — social scoring, covert manipulation, emotion recognition at work or school, sensitive biometric categorisation, and untargeted face scraping. Those bans have applied since 2 February 2025.
Almost no small business using a writing assistant or a labelled shop chatbot touches this list. Read it so you can be sure. Ordinary drafting is not covert manipulation. A loyalty stamp card is not social scoring. A staff pass photo with consent is not untargeted face scraping.
This is general information, not legal advice.
What the law actually says
"The following AI practices shall be prohibited:"— EU AI Act, Article 5(1) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689); in force from 2 February 2025 · eur-lex.europa.eu
In plain words
- This is not a scare list for a café with ChatGPT. It is how to check you are nowhere near the banned set.
- The bans applied from 2 February 2025 (Article 113(a), Chapter II). They are not waiting for 2027.
- If a vendor’s tool did one of these things, you still should not switch that mode on. Ask the vendor, and keep a note.
- Ordinary drafting, bookkeeping assistants and a labelled website chatbot are not these practices.
Manipulative techniques
"the placing on the market, the putting into service or the use of an AI system that deploys subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness or purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques, with the objective, or the effect of materially distorting the behaviour of a person or a group of persons by appreciably impairing their ability to make an informed decision, thereby causing them to take a decision that they would not have otherwise taken in a manner that causes or is reasonably likely to cause that person, another person or group of persons significant harm;"— EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(a) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) · eur-lex.europa.eu
- This is about systems designed to distort someone’s decisions below the waterline, with significant harm in view — not about a polite sales email.
Social scoring
"the placing on the market, the putting into service or the use of AI systems for the evaluation or classification of natural persons or groups of persons over a certain period of time based on their social behaviour or known, inferred or predicted personal or personality characteristics, with the social score leading to either or both of the following:"— EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(c) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) · eur-lex.europa.eu
- Scoring people over time from their social behaviour, then treating them worse in a different context, is the banned pattern. A simple shop loyalty stamp card is not this.
Untargeted face scraping
"the placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of AI systems that create or expand facial recognition databases through the untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage;"— EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(e) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) · eur-lex.europa.eu
- Building or growing a face database by scraping the internet or CCTV without targeting is banned. Taking a staff pass photo with consent is not this.
Emotion recognition at work
"the placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of AI systems to infer emotions of a natural person in the areas of workplace and education institutions, except where the use of the AI system is intended to be put in place or into the market for medical or safety reasons;"— EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(f) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) · eur-lex.europa.eu
- Inferring how a worker or student “feels” from a camera or voice tool is banned, with a narrow medical or safety exception. Do not add a mood score to hiring or shift planning.
Biometric categorisation of sensitive attributes
"the placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of biometric categorisation systems that categorise individually natural persons based on their biometric data to deduce or infer their race, political opinions, trade union membership, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation;"— EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(g) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) · eur-lex.europa.eu
- Using biometrics to infer race, politics, union membership, religion, sex life or sexual orientation is banned. Unlocking a phone with a face is not this use.
- Scans your computer and lists every AI tool your business actually uses.
- Checks your settings files for the transparency basics and produces a plain-language readiness report.
- Runs in your browser, free, nothing uploaded.
- Every month: re-scan, and the report can be updated each month — "what changed since last check" is written for you.
- Your records build into a printable readiness pack: tool inventory, training journal, disclosure checklist.
- Keeps the dated history an inspector would ask to see.
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Readiness guidance, not legal advice. GlassBots checks your own computer — nothing leaves it.