What EU AI Act - Prohibition on Emotion Recognition AI in Workplaces and Educational Institutions (Article 5(1)(f)) requires
EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689) Article 5(1)(f) prohibits the placing on the market, putting into service, or use of AI systems intended to infer emotions of natural persons in the context of the workplace and educational institutions - applicable from 2 February 2025 (the date prohibited practices became enforceable under Article 113); 'emotion recognition system' is defined in Article 3(34) as an AI system intended to identify or infer emotions or intentions of natural persons on the basis of their biometric data; the prohibition covers AI systems that infer feelings, emotional states, or affective responses including happiness, distress, boredom, focus, arousal, or deceptiveness from facial expressions, voice patterns, body language, or physiological signals; two exceptions to the prohibition apply: (1) AI placed on the market or put into service for medical reasons - e.g., pain assessment tools for non-verbal patients, post-stroke facial muscle analysis; (2) AI placed on the market or put into service for safety reasons - e.g., drowsiness detection systems for vehicle operators or machine operators; the prohibition applies to providers placing emotion recognition AI on the EU market AND to deployers using such AI in workplace or educational contexts, making this one of the EU AI Act prohibitions with the most immediate direct applicability to HR technology, employee monitoring, and EdTech sectors.
Pillar: AI Governance & Law · Authority: European Parliament and Council of the EU · Version: 1.0.0 · Last updated:
Primary source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1689
SHA-256 integrity: 371cecb7df7da77c716af69bce449ccf409a42913f169e682193aa8ddb81e468
Primary Citations — 5 traced to source
- {"title":"Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 - EU AI Act: Article 5(1)(f) - Prohibition on Emotion Recognition AI in Workplaces and Educational Institutions","url":"https://eur-lex.europa.eu","relevance":"Primary EU AI Act prohibition provision establishing the absolute ban on emotion recognition AI in workplace and educational contexts - Article 5(1)(f) is the definitive legal text of the prohibition, its exceptions, and its scope applicable to both providers and deployers"}
- {"title":"Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 - EU AI Act: Article 3(34) - Definition of Emotion Recognition System","url":"https://eur-lex.europa.eu","relevance":"EU AI Act definition of emotion recognition system applicable to Article 5(1)(f) - Article 3(34) defines the scope of the prohibition by defining which AI systems constitute emotion recognition systems based on biometric data"}
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