European Union: EDPB and EDPS joint opinion on proposed EU AI regulation suggests a general ban on using AI for automated recognition of human characteristics in public

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) released a joint opinion on June 18, 2021. The joint opinion refers to the proposal of the European Commission ("the Proposal") made on 21 April 2021, regarding the coordinated rules on the use of AI as well as the regulation thereof. As part of the joint paper, the EDPB and EDPS criticize the fact that the Proposal does not include cooperative international law enforcement as this leads to possible bypassing of the regulation. Secondly, upcoming AI regulation shouldn't allow any social scoring. Finally and most importantly, the EDPB and EDPS also criticize the application of AI in order to automatically recognize human features (such as face, voice, fingerprints and even the categorization in clusters) in public spaces and are of the opinion that said usage is to be banned.