The AI Act will be the world’s first binding legislation to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI), including in the migration field. The text voted for today bans harmful uses of AI and subjects “high-risk” uses to enhanced safeguards.

MEPs included bans on intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI systems such as:

• emotion recognition technologies, which explicitly extend to the EU’s borders. Emotion recognition technologies claim to detect people’s emotions based on assumptions about how someone acts when feeling a certain way, including to assess their credibility. Immigration authorities in some Member States already tested the use of these types of systems to inform decisions about who qualifies for protection, and does not.
• biometric categorisation systems that use personal characteristics to classify people and to inform inferences based on those characteristics. This kind of software is used to determine whether someone’s dialect matched the region they say they are from.
• predictive policing systems, which use preconceived notions about who is risky to make decisions about the policing of certain groups and spaces.

MEPs categorized as “high-risk”:

• forecasting tools that claim to predict people’s movements at borders.
• surveillance technologies such as drones, thermal imaging cameras, radar sensors, and others that are used to detect and locate transit groups.

Before negotiations with the Council on the final form of the law can begin, this draft negotiating mandate needs to be endorsed by the whole Parliament, with the vote expected during the 12-15 June session.

For further information, please read the press release from the European Parliament and the press release from PICUM.