Most of the advice out there about AI interviews is about how to perform. Look at the camera. Speak clearly. Get your stories in order. All useful, and I coach my clients on it every week.

But there’s a whole side of this that hardly anyone is talking about, and it’s the side that actually puts some power back in your hands. You have rights. Real, legal ones. And if an AI tool has screened you out of a job, you may be entitled to ask a human being to look again.

Let me walk you through what’s changed, because it’s more relevant to you than you might think.

The EU has drawn a clear line around emotion detection

For a while, some hiring tools claimed they could read candidates. Not just what you said, but how you said it. Your facial expressions. Your tone. Whether you seemed confident, or nervous, or evasive.

Since February 2025, using AI to infer someone’s emotions in a hiring process has been prohibited under the EU AI Act. This isn’t a gentle guideline. The fines reach up to 35 million euros or 7 percent of a company’s global annual turnover, whichever is higher. The full set of prohibitions takes effect on 2 August 2026.

There’s an important nuance here, and it’s worth understanding so you know exactly where the line sits. The ban is about inferring your internal emotional state from your face, voice or other biometric signals. It is not about transcription. A tool that turns your spoken answers into text so a recruiter can review what you said is fine. A tool that claims to know how you were feeling while you said it is not. Words are allowed. Reading your feelings is not.

If you’re applying to roles that touch the EU, this matters. And even if you’re not, it tells you something about the direction of travel.

In the UK, the ICO is watching recruitment closely

This is the part that’s directly relevant if you’re based here.

The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 came into force on 5 February 2026, and it updated the rules in UK GDPR around automated decision-making. It also matters for a reason that’s easy to miss: it wrote your rights into law. Under Article 22A of the UK GDPR, as amended by that Act, you can challenge a decision made solely by an automated system and ask for a human to review it. That’s not a favour a company chooses to grant you. It’s a right.

On top of that, on 31 March 2026 the Information Commissioner’s Office opened a consultation on how the updated rules apply in practice. That consultation closed on 29 May, and the final guidance is expected over the summer. So the detail may firm up further, but the direction is already clear, and there’s a separate statutory code of practice on AI and automated decisions coming later in the year too.

Here’s the finding that jumped out at me from the ICO’s work. A lot of employers believe they’re using AI as a helpful assistant, with a human making the real decision. But in practice, those tools are often making the decision on their own, with no meaningful human involvement at all.

And the ICO has been firm about what “meaningful” means. It is not someone glancing at an AI-generated shortlist and inviting everyone on it to interview. That’s rubber-stamping, and it doesn’t count. A genuine human review means a person who has the authority, the discretion and the actual ability to change the outcome. Someone who could look at the AI’s decision and say no, actually, we’re doing this differently.

The ICO has also said recruitment is a priority area for enforcement. So this isn’t theoretical.

What this means for you

Put the legal detail to one side for a moment, because here’s the practical bit.

You can ask whether a decision about your application was made by an automated system. You can request that a real person reviews it. And you can ask, before you even sit down to the interview, whether AI or a human will be assessing you, so you can prepare in the right way rather than being caught off guard.

I’ve had clients walk into what they assumed was a normal video interview, only to find an AI conducting it. No warning, no chance to prepare mentally for a very different experience. Knowing you’re allowed to ask the question up front changes that completely.

None of this is about treating AI as the villain. I use it every day, and I coach my clients to use it well, because it genuinely helps. But there’s a real difference between feeling like a robot rejected you and that’s simply that, and understanding that you’re allowed to ask questions, request a human review, and be told how you’re being assessed.

That shift, from powerless to informed, is a big one. Especially when you’re already carrying everything else that comes with a job search.

A few things to keep in your back pocket

Keep these in mind not to catch anyone out, but so you can go into the process feeling steadier and better prepared.