What EU AI Act - Prohibition on Untargeted Scraping of Facial Images to Create Facial Recognition Databases (Article 5(1)(e)) requires
EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689) Article 5(1)(e) prohibits AI systems that create or expand facial recognition databases through the untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage; applicable from 2 February 2025 per Article 113; the prohibition targets the data collection and database building practice rather than the use of existing lawfully assembled facial recognition databases - it specifically prohibits the creation or expansion of such databases through mass untargeted harvesting of facial images from publicly accessible online sources or physical surveillance infrastructure; 'untargeted scraping' means the mass collection of facial images without a specific individual identification target - collecting billions of facial images from social media, news archives, public websites, or CCTV footage to build a general-purpose facial recognition training dataset or reference database; the prohibition applies to: commercial facial recognition providers (such as Clearview AI and comparable services) that have built databases by scraping billions of faces from the internet without individual consent; law enforcement agencies building post-hoc facial identification databases by scraping social media at mass scale; government agencies building population-level facial recognition datasets from CCTV networks without specific investigation targets; private security companies building facial recognition reference datasets from online sources; the prohibition does not prohibit targeted collection of specific individual facial images for specific identified investigative purposes - it prohibits mass untargeted collection as a general database-building practice; the Article 5(1)(e) prohibition operates alongside existing GDPR restrictions on biometric data processing without consent and Directive 2016/680 law enforcement biometric data restrictions.
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: 02f298c35e83b5f3845c13773bc1cf9ea8bd6b6af3f189c4eab50c6d612e6354
Primary Citations — 5 traced to source
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 - EU AI Act: Article 5(1)(e) - Prohibition on Untargeted Scraping of Facial Images for Facial Recognition Databases
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 - EU AI Act: Article 113 - Entry into Force and Application Dates
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