AI Act guidelines: prohibited AI practices (Article 5)

Published by the Commission on 4 February 2025, these guidelines explain the AI practices prohibited under Article 5 of the AI Act, including harmful manipulation and deception, exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, individual criminal risk prediction, untargeted scraping of facial images, emotion recognition in workplaces and education, biometric categorisation and real-time remote biometric identification for law enforcement. They give legal explanations and practical examples to ensure consistent application across the EU; they are non-binding and authoritative interpretation rests with the Court of Justice. Article 5 applies from 2 February 2025.