European Union: EPRS publishes study and recommendations on the use of biometrics in AI systems

The European Parliament Research Service (EPRS) published a study titled "Person identification, human rights, and ethical principles: Rethinking biometrics in the era of artificial intelligence." The study looks at biometrics in the age of artificial intelligence with a focus on the links between personal identity, human rights, and ethical standards. In particular, the study examines key related concepts introduced by the European Commission's proposal for a Regulation on Laying Down Harmonised Rules on Artificial Intelligence ("Draft AI Regulation'"), such as remote biometric identification, biometric categorisation, and emotion recognition. The study identifies gaps in the Draft AI Regulation's approach and includes policy recommendations to the European Commission. More precisely, the EPRS study suggests that the Draft AI Regulation pursues the following policy options: - Improve the future qualification of new AI systems as high-risk; - Explicitly ban certain uses of live facial recognition; - Regulate 'post' remote biometric identification in the same way as 'real-time' remote biometric identification; - Establish the necessary safeguards for real-time remote biometric identification at the EU level; - Ban AI systems assigned to categories that constitute sensitive data based on bi-directional data.