The second step in the analysis should be whether the particular AI application or AI System is prohibited per se under the AI Act. There are six prohibited headings as follows outlined in Article 5 of the AI Act.
1. Subliminal techniques
AI Systems which operate beyond a person鈥檚 consciousness, and which may include manipulative or deceptive techniques which could distort a person鈥檚 decision making in a way which is reasonably likely to cause significant harm.
2. Exploiting human vulnerabilities
Where AI Systems exploit the vulnerabilities of a specific group of persons due to certain characteristics in order to materially distort their behaviour in a way which is reasonably likely to cause significant harm.
3. Social scoring
The deployment of AI to gauge the trustworthiness of natural persons over a period of time based on their social behaviour or known, or predicted personal or personality characteristics where such social scoring has a detrimental effect on the treatment of certain natural persons in contexts which are different to where source data was collected, or where such social scoring has a detrimental effect on the treatment of certain natural persons which is disproportionate to the nature of the source social data.
4. AI System use in Criminality Risk Assessments
This involves AI Systems making risk assessments of natural persons in order to predict criminality.
5. Facial recognition databases
Using AI Systems to create or expand facial recognition databases though untargeted scraping of facial images from internet or CCTV.
6. Emotional inference generation in workplace and education setting
Use of AI systems to infer emotions of a natural person in the areas of workplace and education institutions.
In line items 1 and 2 above, the wording 鈥渟ignificant harm鈥 is clearly a higher threshold than mere 鈥渉arm鈥. This is a higher threshold than previous drafts of the AI Act, which pinned these line items to harming natural persons in a 鈥渕aterial鈥 way. Recital 29 makes clear that the prohibition does not cover AI Systems which use subliminal techniques or exploit vulnerabilities which do not 鈥渉ave sufficiently important adverse impacts on physical, psychological health or financial interests鈥.