1. The following AI practices shall be prohibited:
the placing on the market, putting into service or use of an AI system that deploys subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness or purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques, with the objective, or the effect of materially distorting the behaviour of a person or a group of persons by appreciably impair ing their ability to make an informed decision, thereby causing them to take a decisionthat they would not have otherwise taken in a manner that causes or is reasonably likely to cause that person, another person or group of persons significant harm;
Several cumulative conditions must be fulfilled for the prohibition in Article 5(1)(a) AI Act to apply:
The practice must constitute the ‘placing on the market’, the ‘putting into service’, or the ‘use’ of an AI system.
The AI system must deploy subliminal (beyond a person's consciousness ) , purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques.
The techniques deployed by the AI system should have the objective or the effect of materially distorting the behaviour of a person or a group of persons. The distortion must appreciably impair their ability to make an informed decision, resulting in a decision that the person or the group of persons would not have otherwise made.
The distorted behaviour must cause or be reasonably likely to cause significant harm to that person, another person, or a group of persons.
For the prohibition to apply, all four conditions must be simultaneously fulfilled and there must be a plausible causal link between the techniques deployed, the material distortion of the behaviour of the person , and the significant harm that has resulted or is reasonably likely to result from that behaviour.
The first condition, i.e. the‘placing on the market’, the ‘putting into service’ or the ‘use’ of an AI system, has already been analysed. The prohibition, therefore, applies to both providers and deployers of AI systems, each within their respective responsibilities, not to place on the market, put into service or use such systems. The next sections focus on the other three conditions.