EU regulatory register · AI Act
Article 5Prohibited AI practices
CELEX 32024R1689 · Read on 2026-08-18 · Chapter II
Short answer
1. The following AI practices shall be prohibited:
Verbatim from the article. Source: NovaCopilot · https://legal.exploreworldai.com/eu/rattsakter/ai-act-2024-1689/artikel-5 · Short answer as data · Official text
AI Act in short
Some AI uses are banned, high-risk AI requires risk management and human oversight, and deployers must ensure AI literacy.
Source: NovaCopilot
Official text
Read from the EU Publications Office for this CELEX number. The wording stands as published; nothing here is rewritten or summarised.
1. The following AI practices shall be prohibited:
(a)
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;
(b)
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 behaviour 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;
(c)
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:
(i)
detrimental or unfavourable 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;
(ii)
detrimental or unfavourable treatment of certain natural persons or groups of persons that is unjustified or disproportionate to their social behaviour or its gravity;
(d)
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 shall 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;
(e)
The article continues in the official text.
Follow-up questions
Knowledge card
- Applies
- operator: Do not place on the market, put into service or use AI systems for the prohibited practices in Article 5, including manipulative techniques, exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, untargeted scraping of facial images, emotion recognition at work or in education, and biometric categorisation by sensitive traits.
- Risk if ignored
- critical
- What to do
- Do not place on the market, put into service or use AI systems for the prohibited practices in Article 5, including manipulative techniques, exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, untargeted scraping of facial images, emotion recognition at work or in education, and biometric categorisation by sensitive traits.
- Deadline
- Applies since 2 February 2025.
card:eu:article:ai-act--art-5 · sha256 fb94fc200d0d · Source: NovaCopilot
Obligations, actions and sanctions
Article 5 · Role: operator
Do not place on the market, put into service or use AI systems for the prohibited practices in Article 5, including manipulative techniques, exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, untargeted scraping of facial images, emotion recognition at work or in education, and biometric categorisation by sensitive traits.
Deadline: Applies since 2 February 2025.
Decision chain (JSON)
Sanction: Administrative fine: prohibited practices up to EUR 35 million or 7 % of worldwide annual turnover; other obligations up to EUR 15 million or 3 %; incorrect information up to EUR 7.5 million or 1 %. For general-purpose AI models the Commission (AI Office) decides, up to EUR 15 million or 3 %.
Summary of the obligation in the register; the official language versions on EUR-Lex are authoritative. Source: NovaCopilot
Risk, sanction and outcome
Art. 5 · operator
Risk: high · Sanction: administrative_fine, högst EUR 35 000 000 · Authority: Market surveillance authority
Decisions applying the provision: none in the register
Full chain (JSON)
Outcomes are counted from stored judgments that cite the provision verbatim. Source: NovaCopilot
Recitals that carry the interpretation
The recitals in the preamble have no legal force of their own but often decide how the article is read. The links are curated against the official text. Read 2026-08-31.
Skäl 28 · Article 5
Why manipulation and exploitation of vulnerability are banned: practices that undermine free choice.
Skäl 44 · Article 5
The carve-outs for law-enforcement biometric identification: strict proportionality and judicial review.
Guidance and secondary law
Authority guidance and the delegated or implementing acts that fill the article, with the primary source at the issuing body. Read 2026-08-31.
- Guideline · Europeiska kommissionen2025-02-04Commission Guidelines on prohibited artificial intelligence practices under Regulation (EU) 2024/1689
The Commission's reading of the prohibited AI practices in Article 5: manipulation, vulnerability, social scoring and biometric categorisation.
Article 5
The text is quoted from the official source and is not legal advice. A national court reads the language version that binds in its jurisdiction.
Verifiable trust signals
- Source-linked answers and explicit evidence gaps
- Obligations, controls, risks and consequences
- Stable objects and verifiable checksums
- Rule-based objects, optional source-linked reasoning
- Model card, source status and audit