Right to Privacy and Data Protection Concerns Raised by the Development and Usage of Face Recognition Technologies in the European Union.

This article examines the challenges that the rapid development and use of facial recognition technologies (FRT) and related artificial intelligence (AI) pose to privacy and personal data protection, particularly within the European Union (EU) legal framework. It distinguishes between different types of FRT—face detection, facial characterization, validation (1:1), and identification (1:n)—noting that identification raises the most significant privacy concerns due to its use of biometric data and large databases. While current EU legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Law Enforcement Directive, provides some safeguards, these are considered insufficient to address emerging risks such as mass surveillance, data aggregation, and predictive policing. The article also reviews the EU's proposed Artificial Intelligence Act, which aims to regulate AI systems with a risk-based approach but may not fully resolve privacy issues related to data collection and processing at early stages.