EU AI Act — Prohibited Practices (Article 5): AI Compliance Requirements
EU AI Act Article 5 bans eight categories of AI outright — no grace period, no exceptions. These prohibitions became enforceable February 2, 2025 and are subject to the HIGHEST penalties in the entire AI Act. Key bans: (1) Social scoring of individuals by public/private bodies. (2) AI systems exploiting vulnerabilities (age, disability, socioeconomic status) to manipulate behavior. (3) Subliminal AI techniques that distort behavior. (4) Emotion recognition in workplaces and educational institutions. (5) Biometric categorization to deduce race, political opinion, religion, sexual orientation. (6) AI systems predicting crime risk based on personality or profiling. (7) Real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement (narrow exceptions). (8) Scraping facial images from internet/CCTV to build recognition databases. If your AI product touches any of these — you have ZERO compliance buffer. Stop immediately.
Key Facts
February 2, 2025
August 2, 2025
€35,000,000 or 7% of global annual turnover — highest penalty in the entire AI Act
What Your Business Must Do
4 compliance requirements identified. Critical requirements carry the highest risk of enforcement action.
Prohibited Practices Self-Audit
CriticalConduct an immediate audit of all AI systems against EU AI Act Article 5. Document your review. If any system falls under a prohibited category, cease use immediately. Even a low-risk appearance is not a defense — Article 5 is strict liability.
Deadline: August 2, 2025
Emotion Recognition Workplace Check
CriticalIf you use any AI system that infers emotional state from video/audio/biometrics in your workplace or educational setting — this is NOW prohibited. Includes: performance monitoring AI, call center emotion scoring, student engagement AI. Remove or stop using such systems.
Deadline: August 2, 2025
Social Scoring Prohibition Check
High PriorityAny AI system that evaluates trustworthiness, social behavior, or "social credit" to determine treatment in unrelated contexts is banned. Includes insurance AI using spending behavior for unrelated coverage decisions. Document that your AI does NOT perform social scoring.
Deadline: August 2, 2025
AI Literacy Obligation (Article 4)
Medium PriorityAlso effective February 2, 2025: all providers and deployers of AI systems must ensure "sufficient AI literacy" of their staff. This is a soft but real obligation. Implement AI training for employees who interact with, manage, or oversee AI systems.
Deadline: August 2, 2025
Frequently Asked Questions
Does EU AI Act — Prohibited Practices (Article 5) apply to my business?
EU AI Act Article 5 bans eight categories of AI outright — no grace period, no exceptions. These prohibitions became enforceable February 2, 2025 and are subject to the HIGHEST penalties in the entire AI Act. Key bans: (1) Social scoring of individua. Use ComplianceIQ's free scanner to get a personalized assessment in under 5 minutes.
What is the penalty for non-compliance?
The maximum penalty under EU AI Act — Prohibited Practices (Article 5) is: €35,000,000 or 7% of global annual turnover — highest penalty in the entire AI Act. Fines are typically scaled by company size, severity of violation, and whether violations were willful or accidental.
How do I comply with EU AI Act — Prohibited Practices (Article 5)?
The 4 requirements above cover the core obligations. The fastest path to compliance is: (1) conduct an AI risk assessment, (2) document your AI systems, (3) implement transparency disclosures where required. ComplianceIQ generates all required documents automatically.
Official Source
https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/5/Last updated: 2026-04-12 — verify at source before relying on this information.
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