ARTICLE 19 urges EU to band remote biometric surveillance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act

The AI Act puts a strong emphasis on developing technical standards to provide guidance to implement the Act’s requirements, which ARTICLE 19 believes will fall on European Standardisation Organisations that are not inclusive or multistakeholder, and have limited opportunities for human rights expertise to meaningfully participate in their processes.
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ARTICLE 19, an international human rights organisation, has called for a full ban on remote biometric surveillance and emotion recognition technologies ahead of the European Parliament’s vote on the EU Artificial Intelligence Act. The organisation has urged policymakers to strengthen human rights considerations in the Act and to be cautious about relying on standard-setting bodies to guide the implementation of crucial aspects of the Act. According to ARTICLE 19, there has been a rise in the number and types of AI systems being deployed in the EU to surveil people’s movements in public spaces on a mass scale, infringing on privacy and potentially deterring people from engaging in civic activities. The organization argues that emotion recognition technologies are based on discriminatory and pseudo-scientific foundations and are inconsistent with international human rights standards. The AI Act puts a strong emphasis on developing technical standards to provide guidance to implement the Act’s requirements, which ARTICLE 19 believes will fall on European Standardisation Organisations that are not inclusive or multistakeholder, and have limited opportunities for human rights expertise to meaningfully participate in their processes.

ARTICLE 19 joins a list of actors, who have called for stronger rules on AI products and services. In a similar vain, a group of 12 European Union lawmakers working on legislation related to AI have called for a summit to discuss ways to control the development of advanced AI systems, stating that they were evolving faster than expected. In addition, forty-two German trade unions and associations have urged the European Union to strengthen draft AI rules due to concerns about generative AI, such as ChatGPT.

The European Commission will finalise the details of AI rules over the coming months before they become legislation. The political agreement on the AI Act will be voted on by leading European Parliament committees on 26 April.