EU AI Act says TA tech platforms may suggest, but not determine which candidates get seen

We recently published an in-depth article about whether laws such as the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act make the scoring, ranking, or matching of candidates against job openings illegal.

Today, I bring to you the perspective from a strategic digital marketer, Milton Brown of Multitouch Marketing Agency. He’s worked since 2008 across data-driven paid media, analytics, and AI-supported marketing systems, including tracking and optimization frameworks that affect how people are sorted, matched, and surfaced in digital platforms.

According to Milton, “the EU AI Act does not make all job seeker scoring, ranking, or matching by job boards and ATS automatically illegal. But systems used for recruitment, candidate screening, filtering, ranking, or deciding access to work are generally treated as high-risk, which means they can still be used only if the provider and deployer meet strict obligations around risk management, data governance, documentation, logging, human oversight, accuracy, and compliance.”

Milton continues, “The big line is this: ranking and matching can continue, but if the system is being used to materially influence hiring decisions or access to employment, it moves into a tightly regulated category. A job board that suggests candidates to a recruiter is one thing; a platform that gates applications, auto-filters people out, or determines who gets seen first in a way that affects opportunity will face much heavier compliance expectations before that use is lawful in the EU market.”

This is similar to how Multitouch Marketing handles campaign automation and tracking: the tool itself is not banned, but the use case, controls, and audit trail matter. “If I were advising a recruitment platform, I’d focus immediately on documenting exactly where scoring affects eligibility, where humans can intervene, what data is being used, and whether the ranking logic is part of an employment decision workflow, because that is where legality turns.”