Prohibited AI Practices in Healthcare under the European Artificial Intelligence Act

This paper examines how Article 5 of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act prohibits certain AI uses in healthcare, including emotion recognition and biometric categorisation, highlighting their legal implications for fundamental rights, regulatory compliance, and the protection of vulnerable populations. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), adopted in 2024, is the world’s first comprehensive legal framework for artificial intelligence (AI). Its impact extends beyond the EU, since all providers, importers, distributors, and deployers placing AI systems on the EU market or using them in the EU must comply with role-specific obligations. What is often overlooked in scholarship and policy debates is that the AI Act does not only impose new requirements – it also prohibits certain uses of AI. Article 5 of the AI Act identifies AI practices incompatible with fundamental rights. Article 5 stands apart from the rest of the AI Act. While most provisions set conditions for “high-risk” AI, this provision classifies a small number of uses as “unacceptable” and therefore prohibited. However, several of these bans contain narrowly defined exceptions, mainly for medical or safety purposes. Understanding how these categorical prohibitions and their exceptions interact is crucial for sectors like healthcare, where both risk and necessity are high.