# Commission guidelines on prohibited AI practices: Commission Guidelines on prohibited artificial intelligence practices established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act)

Source: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-commission-guidelines-prohibited-ai-practices-2025
Last updated: Aug 26, 2026

On February 4, 2025 — two days after the Article 5 prohibitions began applying — the European Commission published non-binding guidelines interpreting the AI Act's prohibited practices, including harmful manipulation, exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, individual crime prediction, untargeted facial-image scraping, emotion recognition in workplaces and real-time remote biometric identification. Authoritative interpretation is reserved to the Court of Justice of the EU. For banks the relevant lines are the social-scoring ban and the ban on exploiting vulnerabilities such as age or economic situation to cause significant harm.

## At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Authority | [EU AI Act](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/eu-ai-act) |
| Type | Guidance |
| Status | In force |
| Published | Feb 4, 2025 |
| Effective | Feb 4, 2025 |
| Applies to | All providers and deployers of AI systems in the EU, including banks |
| Official text | https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-prohibited-artificial-intelligence-ai-practices-defined-ai-act |

## Key points

- Covers each Article 5(1) prohibition with legal analysis and practical examples; explicitly non-binding, with final interpretation reserved for the CJEU.
- Social scoring (Art. 5(1)(c)) is prohibited where AI evaluates people based on social behaviour or personal characteristics and produces detrimental treatment in unrelated contexts or disproportionate to the behaviour; creditworthiness assessment using legitimate financial data is not per se social scoring.
- Exploitation of vulnerabilities (Art. 5(1)(b)) — age, disability, or a specific social or economic situation — is prohibited where it materially distorts behaviour and causes significant harm, a risk area for AI-driven marketing of credit products.
- Manipulative or deceptive techniques (Art. 5(1)(a)) capture subliminal or purposefully deceptive AI design, relevant to customer-facing chatbots and nudging.
- Prohibitions applied from February 2, 2025; violations carry the top penalty tier of up to €35M or 7% of worldwide turnover.
- Emotion recognition in the workplace is banned except for medical or safety reasons — relevant to employee-monitoring tools in banks.

## What changed for banks

The guidelines are the first Commission statement of how Article 5 will be read, letting banks screen customer-facing and marketing AI against the bans with concrete examples rather than statutory text alone. They confirm that ordinary credit scoring is not social scoring, while flagging vulnerability exploitation and manipulative design as the live risks in retail finance.

## Use cases it governs

- [Customer-facing chatbots](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/by-use-case#customer-chatbots)
- [Fair lending & discrimination](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/by-use-case#fair-lending)
- [Credit scoring & underwriting](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/by-use-case#credit-underwriting)
- [AI governance (general)](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/by-use-case#governance-general)

## FAQ

### Is credit scoring social scoring under the EU AI Act?

Not in itself. Social scoring under Article 5(1)(c) requires evaluating people on social behaviour or personal characteristics with detrimental treatment unrelated to the original context or disproportionate to it. Credit assessment on legitimate financial data is instead regulated as high-risk under Annex III 5(b).

### Are the Commission's prohibited-practices guidelines legally binding?

No. They set out the Commission's interpretation and will guide enforcement, but only the Court of Justice of the EU can give an authoritative interpretation.

## Related documents

- [Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI)](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-digital-omnibus-ai-regulation-2026-1744) — Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 as regards the simplification of the implementation of harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Digital Omnibus on AI) (Jul 24, 2026)
- [Commission guidelines on AI Act Article 50 transparency](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-commission-guidelines-ai-act-article-50-transparency-2026) — Commission Guidelines on the implementation of the transparency obligations for certain AI systems under Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act) (Jul 20, 2026)
- [Draft Commission guidelines on high-risk classification](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-commission-draft-guidelines-high-risk-classification-2026) — Draft Commission Guidelines on the classification of high-risk AI systems under Article 6 of the AI Act (May 19, 2026)
- [EBA factsheet on the AI Act](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eba-ai-act-factsheet-banking-payments-2025) — AI Act: implications for the EU banking and payments sector (EBA factsheet) (Nov 21, 2025)
- [Commission GPAI model guidelines](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-commission-guidelines-gpai-obligations-2025) — Commission Guidelines on the scope of the obligations for general-purpose AI models established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act) (Jul 18, 2025)
- [General-Purpose AI Code of Practice](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-gpai-code-of-practice-2025) — General-Purpose AI Code of Practice under the AI Act (Transparency, Copyright, and Safety and Security chapters) (Jul 10, 2025)
- [Commission guidelines on the AI system definition](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-commission-guidelines-ai-system-definition-2025) — Commission Guidelines on the definition of an artificial intelligence system established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act) (Feb 6, 2025)
- [Regulation (EU) 2024/1689](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/ai-regulation/documents/eu-ai-act-regulation-2024-1689) — Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act) (Jul 12, 2024)

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026. Cite the official text (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-prohibited-artificial-intelligence-ai-practices-defined-ai-act) for the rule and this page for the summary and dates.

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