AI applications and use cases that are strictly banned by law due to their unacceptable risk to fundamental human rights, safety, or privacy, most notably defined under frameworks like the European Union’s AI Act.
AI uses that are completely illegal because they violate basic human rights, like government social scoring systems or real-time facial recognition tracking in public spaces. Just as certain dangerous chemicals are banned from consumer products, these AI practices are banned outright, with no compliance “workaround.”
Under regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act (Article 5), prohibited practices include AI systems that deploy subliminal techniques to materially distort human behavior, exploit vulnerabilities of specific groups (e.g., children or the elderly), conduct social scoring by public authorities, or perform real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces (with very narrow, strictly defined law enforcement exceptions). These are classified as “Unacceptable Risk.”
Organizations must screen all proposed AI use cases against prohibited lists during the earliest ideation phase. Attempting to develop or deploy a prohibited practice is a hard stop that can result in immediate project termination, reputational damage, and severe legal liability.
A city government attempts to deploy an AI system that assigns citizens a “civic trust score” based on their social media activity and public behavior, penalizing them with restricted access to public services if their score drops. Under the EU AI Act, this social scoring system is a Prohibited AI Practice and cannot be legally deployed.