Guidance study on AI Act Article 5(1)(h)/(e) prohibitions

Guidance Study on Article 5(1)(h) prohibition and its three exceptions (Article 5(1)(h)(i)-(iii)), the procedural requirements laid down in Article 5(2), and the prohibition of Article 5(1)(e) of the AI Act

The study analyses the AI Act's prohibition on real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement purposes (Article 5(1)(h)) and its three exceptions — targeted searches for crime victims and missing persons, prevention of imminent threats to life or safety or terrorist attacks, and identification of suspects in serious crimes listed in Annex II — together with the procedural safeguards required under Article 5(2). It also examines the separate prohibition in Article 5(1)(e) on creating or expanding facial recognition databases through untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage.