European Privacy Regulators Demand Ban on Public AI Biometric Tracking
The EDPB and EDPS issue a joint opinion calling for a blanket ban on AI systems that automatically recognize human features in publicly accessible spaces. They also urge prohibitions on biometric categorization, emotion inference, and social scoring.
European privacy regulators strongly support the EU's proposed artificial intelligence rules but call for much stricter limits on biometric surveillance. The European Data Protection Board and the European Data Protection Supervisor jointly urge lawmakers to explicitly confirm that existing data protection laws apply to all AI systems covered by the new regulation.
The regulators demand a complete ban on using AI to automatically recognize human features like faces, gait, voice, and DNA in publicly accessible spaces. They also recommend prohibiting AI systems that categorize individuals by ethnicity, gender, or political orientation, as well as banning any use of AI for social scoring.
Additionally, the joint opinion argues against allowing AI to infer human emotions, except in very specific health-related situations. The regulators emphasize that simply classifying an AI system as high-risk does not make it legally acceptable to deploy, and they insist that full compliance with EU data protection laws must be a mandatory requirement before any AI product enters the European market.