The EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act will be the first binding legislation on AI. It was proposed by the European Commission in April 2021 and it aims at promoting ‘trustworthy AI’ and, at the same time, protecting fundamental rights. However, the proposed law was not enough to address and prevent the harms stemming from the use of AI in the migration context.
Unless the EU institutions take action, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act will enable dangerous tech in migration control and threaten everyone’s rights.
From lie detectors to scanning drones, the European Union and its partners are building a vast and powerful web of surveillance and tracking at European orders, deep inside Europe, and beyond. But this is about much more than just border control.
These technologies are tested first on people on the move¹ and racialised communities where it is harder to fight back and challenge them.
Once the tech is in place, there’s no going back – and these dangerous experiments will shape how all of us live.
If the EU AI Act fails to prevent irreversible harms in migration it will undermine its very purpose – protecting the fundamental rights of all people affected by the use of AI.
So we are calling on the European Commission, the Parliament, and Council of the EU to ban the use of experimental tech against people crossing borders and effectively regulate to ensure AI is used with safety and accountability.
¹ By people on the move, we mean migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented people. We recognise that this is an imperfect term and that not all people affected by such systems are ‘on the move’, and some may even have lived in the EU for a long time. However, with this term, we centre that those affected by such systems are people.
