The EU must respect human rights of migrants in the AI Act

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard has sent an open letter calling on the Rapporteurs and members of leading committees on the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) to prohibit the use of certain artificial intelligence (AI) systems which are incompatible with human rights of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the AI Act.

The letter calls for prohibition of:

  1. Automated risk assessment and profiling systems, used to determine whether people on the move present a ‘risk’ of unlawful activity or security threats, given risks to the rights to non-discrimination, privacy and data protection, as well as right to liberty and security.
  2. Predictive analytic systems used to interdict, curtail and prevent migration, posing great risk of refoulement and violation of right to asylum.
  3. Use of AI-based “deception detectors” and other emotion recognition tools, as they threaten rights to non-discrimination, privacy, liberty, and fair trial.
  4. Retrospective (post) Remote Biometric Identification (RBI), in addition to live (real-time) RBI in all contexts, including of migration and border management, which facilitate mass and discriminatory surveillance, and threaten the principle of non-refoulement. Export of such technologies should be prohibited as well.