Prohibited AI Practices Screening — Article 5
How to screen AI systems for prohibited practices under EU AI Act Article 5. All 8 prohibited categories, enforcement timeline, and automated detection.
EU AI Act Article 5 prohibits 8 categories of AI practices that are considered unacceptable risks to fundamental rights. These prohibitions have been in force since February 2, 2025 — the earliest enforcement date in the Act. Any AI system that falls into a prohibited category cannot be placed on the EU market or put into service, regardless of risk mitigation measures. Violations carry fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global turnover — the highest tier in the Act.
All 8 Prohibited AI Practices Under Article 5
Subliminal manipulation below conscious awareness
Art 5(1)(a)AI systems that deploy subliminal techniques beyond a person's consciousness to materially distort behaviour in ways that cause or are likely to cause harm to the person or another person.
Examples: Subliminal audio/visual stimuli in interfaces; algorithmic nudging below conscious threshold
Exploitation of vulnerabilities
Art 5(1)(b)AI systems that exploit specific vulnerabilities of persons due to age, disability, or social/economic situation to materially distort their behaviour in a harmful way.
Examples: Predatory targeting of elderly users; manipulative design for people with cognitive disabilities
Social scoring by public authorities
Art 5(1)(c)AI systems used by or on behalf of public authorities to evaluate or classify individuals based on social behaviour or personal characteristics over time, leading to detrimental or discriminatory treatment in unrelated contexts.
Examples: Government citizen scoring systems; cross-context social credit systems
Real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces
Art 5(1)(d)Real-time remote biometric identification systems (e.g. facial recognition) used in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement, except for specific narrowly-defined exceptions (terrorism, missing children, wanted criminals).
Examples: Live facial recognition CCTV; real-time biometric surveillance in public areas
Post-remote biometric identification (with exceptions)
Art 5(1)(e)Post-remote biometric identification systems used by law enforcement, except where authorised by judicial or independent authority for prosecution of serious offences. Covers retrospective facial recognition in recorded footage.
Examples: Retrospective facial recognition in CCTV archives without judicial authorisation
Biometric categorisation inferring sensitive attributes
Art 5(1)(f)AI systems that categorise individuals based on biometric data to infer or deduce race, political opinions, trade union membership, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, or health status.
Examples: Automated inferral of religion from facial features; biometric profiling for sexual orientation
Emotion recognition in workplaces and education
Art 5(1)(g)AI systems used to infer the emotions of individuals in workplace and educational institution contexts, except for medical or safety reasons. Covers real-time emotion monitoring of employees and students.
Examples: Employee sentiment/engagement monitoring AI; student emotion analysis in classrooms
Predictive policing based on profiling
Art 5(1)(h)AI systems used by or on behalf of law enforcement to assess the risk of an individual committing a criminal offence based solely on profiling or personality traits, without objective and verifiable facts directly linked to criminal activity.
Examples: Recidivism prediction from demographic profiling; pre-crime predictive AI without evidential basis
Enforcement Timeline
EU AI Act entered into force
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 published in the Official Journal and took effect.
Article 5 prohibitions enforceable
All 8 prohibited AI practices are banned across the EU. No transitional period applies.
High-risk AI Act obligations
Articles 9–49 enforcement for high-risk AI systems. GPAI obligations already in force from Aug 2025.
How Scanara Detects Prohibited Practices
Scanara includes a dedicated prohibited practices screening module that scans your AI codebase and system documentation against all 8 Article 5 categories. Unlike manual checklists, Scanara detects code-level indicators of prohibited behaviour — e.g. subliminal stimulus APIs, real-time biometric classification pipelines, emotion-detection integrations in employee-facing applications.
Pattern-based code scanning
Compliance rules tuned to Article 5 — detecting subliminal stimulus libraries, biometric inference pipelines, emotion recognition SDKs, and profiling patterns linked to protected characteristics.
Architecture review flags
Beyond individual code patterns, Scanara flags system architecture characteristics that indicate prohibited use cases — real-time biometric pipelines in public-space contexts, cross-context social scoring data flows.
Zero-tolerance finding severity
Article 5 findings are always classified as Critical severity — they cannot be suppressed or accepted as risk. A finding blocks CI/CD merge gates until the prohibited feature is removed.
Timestamped audit evidence
Each scan records a timestamped result with the policy version and inputs used — attachable to your Annex IV technical documentation as evidence of due diligence on Article 5.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Scanara Helps
Scanara automates EU AI Act compliance from code to dossier. Connect your GitHub repos and get compliance reports in minutes.