An AI agent that drafts a decision for a person to approve can fall outside GDPR Article 22, because the decision is no longer based solely on automated processing. That holds only if the person's involvement is real: authority to differ, competence, the information, and actual use of all three. Token approval brings Article 22 back.
What does Article 22 cover, in plain words?
Article 22 gives people the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning them or similarly significantly affects them. Refusing credit, rejecting an insurance claim or declining a job application are classic examples.
The key word is solely. If a person meaningfully takes part in the decision, it is not solely automated, and Article 22's prohibition and its specific safeguards do not apply. GDPR's other duties, including transparency, fairness and accuracy, still do.
The full treatment of decisions an agent makes itself is in GDPR Article 22 and AI agents that make decisions. This piece is about the much more common design: the agent prepares, a person decides.
Who does the question matter to?
Any controller using agents in processes that end in decisions about people: lenders, insurers, employers, landlords, public bodies, and firms deciding on account closures or fraud blocks. In the UK, the equivalent provisions under UK GDPR raise the same question; see UK GDPR Article 22 and AI agents in UK firms.
When does drafting become deciding?
Regulators and courts look at substance, not labels. A process that puts a person's name on a decision the agent effectively made is still solely automated. Four situations push a drafting agent back into Article 22:
- Rubber-stamping. The approver accepts nearly every draft, quickly, without looking at the underlying evidence. Their involvement is formal, not meaningful.
- No authority to differ. The approver cannot change the outcome, or is discouraged from doing so by targets, process design or culture.
- Information asymmetry. The approver sees only the agent's conclusion, not the data and reasoning behind it, so cannot form an independent view.
- Determining output used by someone else. The agent produces a score or recommendation that another party relies on so heavily that it decides the outcome in practice. European case law has treated that kind of output as itself capable of being an automated decision.
The fourth matters for firms that supply assessments to others. An agent that produces a risk rating sold or passed to a lender may be making the decision, even though the lender signs it.
Agents add a further twist: volume. A person can meaningfully review ten drafted decisions an hour, not five hundred. If an agent's throughput exceeds what reviewers can actually consider, the review becomes formal whatever the procedure says.
How do you keep a drafting agent outside Article 22?
| Requirement | Control | Evidence it leaves |
|---|---|---|
| Decision not solely automated | Agent's capability for adverse decisions set to draft only; a person must act to make it take effect | Capability settings; records showing a person released each decision |
| Approver has authority | Approvers may approve, change or reject without justification to a target | Role definitions; absence of approval-rate targets |
| Approver has competence | Trained on the decision type and on the agent's limits | Training records |
| Approver has information | Approval screen shows sources, extracted figures and the agent's reasoning, not just a conclusion | Screen design; sample records |
| Involvement is real | Monitoring of approval times, override rates and seeded wrong drafts | Monthly review metrics |
| Capacity matches volume | Agent throughput capped to what approvers can review | Queue and staffing records |
| Downstream reliance assessed | Where agent output goes to another party, assess whether it is determining | Assessment record |
Seeded wrong drafts are the most persuasive evidence. If approvers catch deliberately flawed drafts at a good rate, their review is real. If they pass them, it is not, and you know before a regulator tells you.
The same design logic appears in financial crime. An agent can prepare a suspicious activity report, but filing stays with a person who takes responsibility for it; see why an agent can draft a suspicious activity report but never file one.
What will a supervisor or auditor ask?
- Who makes this decision: the agent or the person?
- How often do approvers change or reject the agent's draft?
- How long does an approver spend on each one?
- What does the approver see before deciding?
- Are approvers measured on throughput in a way that discourages disagreement?
- Does anyone else rely on the agent's output to make their own decision?
What does keeping outside Article 22 not achieve?
It does not remove GDPR's other duties: transparency about the use of AI in the process, fairness, accuracy, data minimisation and the right to object to profiling in some cases. It does not avoid the EU AI Act, which for listed high-risk uses requires human oversight and explanations regardless. And it does not reduce the firm's responsibility for the decision; the person who approves acts for the firm. For the full set of duties, see AI agent regulation, mapped to controls.
This is an explanation of the rules, not legal advice; confirm how they apply to you with counsel.
Where Pryme fits
In Pryme, a capability set to depth 2 drafts and a person sends. The agent cannot release the action itself; it is held for a named person, and the verdict records who released it. Because depth is earned through Attest rather than configured, an agent cannot be quietly promoted from drafting to deciding.
Questions people ask
Is a high approval rate proof of rubber-stamping?
Not alone. A well-built agent may produce drafts that are usually right. The test is whether approvers engage: time spent, evidence viewed, and whether they catch seeded errors.
Can the reviewer be from a different team than the decision-maker?
The reviewer must be the person with authority to make the decision. A second-line reviewer checking a sample afterwards is quality assurance, not the human involvement that takes a decision outside Article 22.
Does drafting count if the agent sends the letter after approval?
Yes, if the person approved the decision and the letter's content before it was sent. Automated delivery of a decision a person made does not make the decision automated.