Is biometric access control high-risk under the EU AI Act?
The system being classified
You provide a system that identifies people at the entrance to a site by matching a face captured from a camera against a database of enrolled or watch-listed persons, without their active participation.
High-risk system
Your system falls under Annex III or is a regulated product safety component. The full high-risk obligation set applies from 2 December 2027 (Annex III) or 2 August 2028 (Annex I) — postponed by the 2026 Omnibus. Any Article 50 transparency duties apply already, and the runway is what makes conformity achievable in-house.
This is the classification of the configuration described above, not of your system. One different answer can move it — which is exactly what the comparison further down shows, and what the free assessment settles in about ten minutes.
What produced this verdict
These are the entire inputs. The engine is deterministic, so these answers always produce the verdict above.
Annex III categories
- · Biometric identification or categorisation
Scope and role
- · Provider — you build it or place it on the market under your name
- · Placed on the EU market, or output used in the EU
What applies, and from when (14)
Every entry cites the article it comes from and the date it binds. That second column is the part most summaries of the Omnibus get wrong.
| Article | Obligation | Binding from |
|---|---|---|
| Art. 4 | AI literacy Ensure staff dealing with AI systems have a sufficient level of AI literacy (training records recommended). | 2 February 2025 |
| Best practice | AI system inventory Maintain a central register of all AI systems in use, their purpose, risk tier and owner. | Good practice |
| Art. 9 | Risk management system Establish, document and maintain a continuous, iterative risk management process across the system lifecycle. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 10 | Data and data governance Training, validation and test data must meet quality criteria: relevance, representativeness, error screening, bias examination and mitigation. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 11 + Annex IV | Technical documentation Maintain complete Annex IV technical documentation before placing on the market, kept up to date. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 12 | Record-keeping (automatic logs) The system must automatically record events relevant to identifying risks and substantial modifications over its lifetime. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 13 | Transparency and instructions for deployers Ship clear instructions for use: capabilities, limitations, accuracy metrics, human oversight measures, expected lifetime and maintenance. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 14 | Human oversight by design Design the system so natural persons can effectively oversee it: understand outputs, intervene, and stop the system. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 15 | Accuracy, robustness and cybersecurity Achieve and declare appropriate levels of accuracy and robustness; protect against data poisoning, adversarial attacks and model leaks. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 17 | Quality management system Documented QMS covering regulatory compliance strategy, design controls, testing, data management and post-market monitoring. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 43, 47 + 48 | Conformity assessment, declaration and CE marking Run the applicable conformity assessment procedure (Art. 43), draw up and sign the EU declaration of conformity (Art. 47) and keep it for ten years, then affix CE marking (Art. 48). | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 49 | EU database registration Register the high-risk system in the EU public database before placing it on the market. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 72 | Post-market monitoring Documented plan to actively collect and analyse performance data throughout the system lifetime. | 2 December 2027 |
| Art. 73 | Serious incident reporting Process to report serious incidents to market surveillance authorities within 15 days (or faster for severe cases). | 2 December 2027 |
What would change this verdict
Each row below is the same scenario with one answer changed, re-run through the same engine. These are not predictions about your system; they are what our classifier returns when that single fact differs. Where one change to the scenario necessarily moves a second answer with it, the row says which, and why.
The system only confirms that people are who they claim to be
Becomes minimal riskAnnex III point 1(a) covers remote biometric identification and expressly excludes systems whose sole purpose is biometric verification — one-to-one matching against the template of the person presenting themselves. A badge-and-fingerprint turnstile is verification, not identification, and most access control is built that way.
- Obligations: 14 → 2 (-12)
- Key date changes to No dated obligations pending — AI literacy (Art. 4) applies since 2 February 2025; keep the inventory current
The system infers sensitive attributes from the biometrics
Becomes prohibited practiceBiometric categorisation to deduce race, political opinions, trade union membership, religion or sexual orientation is prohibited outright under Article 5.
- Obligations: 14 → 2 (-12)
- Key date changes to Article 5 prohibitions in force since 2 February 2025 (non-consensual intimate imagery: from 2 December 2026)
You claim the Article 6(3) derogation
Becomes minimal riskAvailable where the system performs a narrow procedural task, improves the result of prior human work, or does no more than preparatory profiling — and never where it profiles natural persons. Claiming it is a documented decision, not a checkbox.
- Obligations: 14 → 2 (-12)
- +1 flagged for counsel review
- Key date changes to No dated obligations pending — AI literacy (Art. 4) applies since 2 February 2025; keep the inventory current
Your system is not this system
The assessment asks the same questions this page answered for a generic configuration, and produces the verdict, the gap list and the 30-day plan for yours. Ten minutes, free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser — your answers never reach us.
Classify your own system →Other configurations
AI inside a regulated product follows the Annex I route, and the Omnibus moved it to a different date from Annex III. Which one binds, and what the second limb of Article 6(1) changes.
A support chatbot is rarely high-risk and never exempt. What Article 50 requires, what it costs to comply, and why the date on this one has already passed.
Synthetic text, image, audio and video carry Article 50 marking duties that have been enforceable since August 2026. What the engine says applies, and from when.
Deploying deepfake content triggers Article 50 disclosure duties that are live now, not in 2027. The engine's verdict for an advertiser using synthetic likenesses.
Produced by rule set 1.6.1, legal state 2026-08-05. The engine is deterministic and contains no language model in the verdict path, and every rule is published at /methodology for you to audit.
AnnexWise is preparation software, not legal advice. This page classifies a described configuration; it is not an opinion on any particular organisation or system.