‘Scraping’ typically refers to using web crawlers, bots, or other means to extract data or content from different sources, including CCTV, websites or social media, automatically. These tools a re software ‘programmed to sift through databases and extract information and to make use of that information for another purpose.
‘Untargeted’ relates to a technique that operates like a ‘vacuum cleaner’, absorbing as much data and information as possible, without targeting specifically and individually intended subject(s) of the scarping. Scraping indiscriminately harvests data or content. Thus, the notion of ‘untargeted’ meanwithout a specific focus on a given individual s or group of individuals. The respect of opt-out of internet protocols such as robot.txt does not affect the untargeted nature of the scraping.
If a scraping tool is instructed to collect images or video containing human faces only of specific individuals or a pre-defined group of persons, then the scraping becomes targeted, for example to find one specific criminal or to identify a group of victims . Such scraping is not covered by the prohibition in Article 5(1)(e) AI Act.
For example, the targeted collection of images focusing on a class of victims, by using crawlers to pick up on images of victims that human traffickers post/advertise on social media channels, is not covered by the prohibition. Untargeted scraping should be interpreted in a manner that does not allow circumvention of the prohibition. The scraping of the Internet or CCTV footage for the creation of a database step-by-step, thereby selecting specific groups of individuals or other criteria each time, should fall within the prohibition of Article 5(1)(e) AI Act where the end-result is functionally the same as pursuing untargeted scraping from the outset.
Where systems combine targeted search es for images or videos with untargeted searches, the untargeted scraping is prohibited.