Facial recognition should be banned in Europe due to its “deep and non-democratic intrusion” into individuals`s non-public lives, EU privacy watchdog the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) mentioned on Friday.
The feedback come two days after the European Commission proposed draft guidelines that will enable facial recognition to be used to seek for lacking youngsters or criminals and in instances of terrorist assaults.
The draft guidelines, which have to be thrashed out with EU nations and the European Parliament, are an try by the Commission to set international guidelines for synthetic intelligence, a know-how dominated by China and the United States.
The privacy watchdog mentioned it regretted that the Commission had not heeded its earlier name to ban facial recognition in public areas.
“A stricter approach is necessary given that remote biometric identification, where AI may contribute to unprecedented developments, presents extremely high risks of deep and non-democratic intrusion into individuals` private lives,” it mentioned in a press release.
“The EDPS will focus in particular on setting precise boundaries for those tools and systems which may present risks for the fundamental rights to data protection and privacy.”
The Commission`s proposals have drawn criticism from civil rights teams, involved about loopholes that will enable authoritarian governments to abuse AI to clamp down on individuals`s rights.