On 11 May 2023, the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) adopted their position on the Act on Harmonised Rules for Artificial Intelligence (AI Act). The AI Act is based on a risk-based management approach and would establish obligations for providers and users depending on the level of risk generated by the AI system. The AI Act aims to establish principles in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including fundamental data protection rights. In particular, under the LIBRE and IMCO position, biometric AI categorisation systems using sensitive data, including gender, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenship status and political orientation, would be prohibited. Furthermore, under the adopted position, the indiscriminate scraping of biometric data from online platforms for the purpose of creating facial recognition databases would be prohibited. The subsequent legislative procedure is for the European Parliament to endorse the draft in plenary during the session in June 2023.
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