Commission Guidelines on prohibited artificial intelligence practices established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act)

Record EU-06

Issued by: European Commission
Jurisdiction: European Union
Level · region: Supranational · Europe
Published / adopted: 2025-02-04
Last updated: 2025-07-31
Language: English

Summary

Non-binding Commission interpretation of the AI Act Art. 5 prohibitions, with legal explanations and practical examples. The prohibitions cover harmful manipulation and exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, individual predictive policing, untargeted facial-image scraping, emotion recognition at work and in education, biometric categorisation of sensitive traits, and real-time remote biometric identification for law enforcement.

Safety topics

prohibited practicespublic-sector use

Status notes

Published on 4 February 2025. Chapter II of the AI Act, on prohibited practices, has applied since 2 February 2025; the rules on its enforcement apply from 2 August 2026. The Commission approved the content of the draft guidelines by a Communication. The guidelines are available in the 24 official EU languages, and their page shows a last update of 31 July 2025. In its first review report under Article 112(1) of the AI Act, COM(2026) 234 of 20 May 2026 (EU-15), the Commission referred to the guidelines and noted a potential regulatory gap for AI systems generating child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate content, which Article 5 did not prohibit. The AI Omnibus (EU-18) added a ninth prohibition, of AI systems that generate non-consensual sexually explicit and intimate content or child sexual abuse material, which applies from December 2026; the guidelines' page shows no update since 31 July 2025.

Sources

Open the official source https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-prohibited-artificial-intelligence-ai-practices-defined-ai-act

Secondary source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A52026DC0234

Local copy

Archived. The secondary source returned a bot-check or empty page this time (The site returned a JavaScript bot-check page (web application firewall) instead of the document); the earlier copy is kept. A source changed since the previous snapshot; both versions are kept. Last attempt 2026-10-17 18:20:35 UTC

Official source (third-party copy, not published) archive/EU-06/2026-10-11/official.html

Retrieved 2026-10-11 13:58:16 UTC

SHA-256 e7688ed3cf2f4cf7c60a0216db8574bbe5a79527bdd7d6edabaa1b787cf18a81

Linked document (PDF) (third-party copy, not published) archive/EU-06/2026-10-17/document-1.pdf

Retrieved 2026-10-17 16:46:42 UTC

SHA-256 8ae48bc505fe8812ed34a4b5f8374f7a721a880f367788ef85a106a27a91efd2

Secondary source (third-party copy, not published) archive/EU-06/2026-10-17/secondary.html

Retrieved 2026-10-17 16:46:48 UTC

SHA-256 09f8912d827f690fcd438b112b3784977b34c047bfbd0bc2bed2f1d8aae24d7a

Verification

The instrument's own official text, or an official register, was stored and confirms the title, date and status. checked 2026-10-17 · official-url-fetched

Stored and read in this run: the Commission's library page for the guidelines (snapshot of 11 Oct 2026, unchanged on 17 Oct), which gives the title, publication on 4 February 2025, the non-binding nature, the 24 language versions and a last update of 31 July 2025; its printable PDF; COM(2026) 234 (EUR-Lex, alt-official), which says the guidelines were published in February 2025 and that enforcement of Chapter II applies from 2 August 2026; and the Commission's AI Act page (17 Oct 2026), which lists the prohibitions, says prohibitions 1 to 8 became effective in February 2025 with these guidelines supporting their application, and says the ninth prohibition, added by the AI Omnibus, comes into effect in December 2026. The guidelines themselves and the approving Communication are not stored, because the site's robots.txt does not allow automated downloads of them; the summary's list of prohibitions rests on the guidelines page and the AI Act page, and official_identifier (the Communication's C(2025) number) stays null. 'Human oversight' was dropped: no stored file supports it. Version 1's notes held remarks on what the fetched page showed; they are now here.

Second check: Independent check by Claude Code (claude-sonnet-5-5), 2026-10-17: 7 field(s) supported.

History

2026-10-17notes: Published 4 Feb 2025, two days after the Art. 5 prohibitions began to apply (2 F → Published on 4 February 2025. Chapter II of the AI Act, on prohibited practices, — research remarks ('not shown on the fetched page', 'no update was found') moved to verification.note; Chapter II and enforcement dates and the COM(2026) 234 findings now quoted from the stored report; the ninth prohibition added from the Commission's AI Act page2026-10-17-recheck-europe-1 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)
2026-10-17safety_topics: ["prohibited practices", "human oversight", "public-sector use"] → ["prohibited practices", "public-sector use"] — 'human oversight' dropped: no stored file supports it; 'prohibited practices' and 'public-sector use' (real-time remote biometric identification for law enforcement, individual criminal offence risk prediction) stay2026-10-17-recheck-europe-1 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)
2026-10-14language: English (later translated into other EU languages) → English — The field held a remark after the language name; it now gives the language names only (AGENTS.md 5.6).manual-2026-10-14 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)

Related records

EU AI Act European Union · Partially in force

Guidelines on the AI system definition European Union · Published (non-binding, current)

AI Act Art. 112 review report 2026 European Union · Published (non-binding, current)

Digital Omnibus on AI (AI Omnibus) European Union · In force

Citation

European Commission. Commission Guidelines on prohibited artificial intelligence practices established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act). 2025-02-04. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-prohibited-artificial-intelligence-ai-practices-defined-ai-act. Status: Published (non-binding, current); verified 2026-10-17 (level A). Local copy archive/EU-06/2026-10-11/official.html retrieved 2026-10-11 13:58:16 UTC, SHA-256 e7688ed3cf2f4cf7c60a0216db8574bbe5a79527bdd7d6edabaa1b787cf18a81. Every AI Policy Ever, version 1.18 (snapshot 2026-10-18), record EU-06.

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