EU AI Act | Prohibited AI

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 behavior 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.

The placing on the market, the putting into service or the use of an AI system that exploits any of the vulnerabilities of a natural person or a specific group of persons due to their age, disability or a specific social or economic situation, with the objective, or the effect, of materially distorting the behavior of that person or a person belonging to that group in a manner that causes or is reasonably likely to cause that person or another person significant harm.

The placing on the market, the putting into service or the use of an AI system that generates or manipulates realistic images, videos, audio or similar material of an identifiable natural person’s intimate parts, or of an identifiable natural person engaged in sexually explicit activities, without that person’s freely-given, specific, informed, unambiguous and explicit consent for that generation or manipulation.

The placing on the market, the putting into service or the use of an AI system that generates or manipulates material or performance within the meaning of Article 2, points (c) and (e), of Directive 2011/93/EU, save where a ‘without right’ defense applies under national law.

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.

^{*Workplace or Education}
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.

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 behavior or known, inferred or predicted personal or personality characteristics, with the social score leading to either or both of the following:

• Detrimental or unfavorable treatment of certain natural persons or groups of persons in social contexts that are unrelated to the contexts in which the data was originally generated or collected
• Detrimental or unfavorable treatment of certain natural persons or groups of persons that is unjustified or disproportionate to their social behavior or its gravity

^{*For Inferring Special Categories}

The placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of biometric categorization systems that categorize 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. This prohibition does not cover any labelling or filtering of lawfully acquired biometric datasets, such as images, based on biometric data or categorizing of biometric data in the area of law enforcement.

The placing on the market, the putting into service for this specific purpose, or the use of an AI system for making risk assessments of natural persons in order to assess or predict the risk of a natural person committing a criminal offence, based solely on the profiling of a natural person or on assessing their personality traits and characteristics. This prohibition does not apply to AI systems used to support the human assessment of the involvement of a person in a criminal activity, which is already based on objective and verifiable facts directly linked to a criminal activity.

^{*In Public by Law Enforcement}
The use of ‘real-time’ remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces for the purposes of law enforcement, unless and in so far as such use is strictly necessary for one of the following objectives:

• The targeted search for specific victims of abduction, trafficking in human beings or sexual exploitation of human beings, as well as the search for missing persons
• The prevention of a specific, substantial and imminent threat to the life or physical safety of natural persons or a genuine and present or genuine and foreseeable threat of a terrorist attack
• The localization or identification of a person suspected of having committed a criminal offence, for the purpose of conducting a criminal investigation or prosecution or executing a criminal penalty for offences referred to in Annex II and punishable in the Member State concerned by a custodial sentence or a detention order for a maximum period of at least four years

The European Commission has published non-binding Guidelines regarding the categories of prohibited AI, although as of yet it has not been updated to account for the new categories (non-consensual sexual imagery and CSAM) added following amendment of the AI Act by the EU AI Omnibus Regulation, effective July 27, 2026. The Guidelines explain how the Commission will interpret the prohibitions, provide examples of prohibited and non-prohibited systems and examples of mitigations that may be adopted by system providers to ensure their systems are not classified as prohibited.

From February 2, 2025, it has been illegal to use or make available any AI system in Europe that falls into one of the prohibited AI categories (with the exception of the new prohibited AI category).
Enforcement of these prohibitions has only been possible since August 2, 2026, when the AI Act’s enforcement provisions took effect.

The prohibited AI Act categories are, with certain exceptions relating to general-purpose AI systems over which the AI Office has exclusive jurisdiction, enforced by the EU Member State Market Surveillance Authorities. The sanctions for violating Article 5 of the AI Act are the most severe: fines may reach up to 7% of its total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year. Non-monetary remedial measures may also be imposed.