Estimates suggest over one billion AI agents will be developed by businesses over the next three years, presenting opportunities and a fair few challenges for users. Primary among the latter will be when AI agents begin to communicate among one another, potentially leading to difficulty in distinguishing which agents are legitimate.
To help ensure the authenticity of agentic AI instances, internet registrar and web hosting company, GoDaddy, has founded an Agent Name Service (ANS) Registry. The open standard platform is what the company terms the internet’s “first trust layer for AI agents”. ANS relies on parts of the infrastructure powering the internet, the Domain Name System (DNS) and public key infrastructure (PKI) certificates.
ANS is hoped to establish a global standard for agent identity. Its open design specification follows the W3C/DID standard, working in any browser without the need of additional software. It should ensure accountability and transparency via permanent logs of agent activities, and will therefore build trust among users.
Each agent is given a unique, readable name and a cryptographically-verifiable identity. All agents are discoverable, verified, and can be properly governed. Each is registered through the company’s ANS Registry and will receive an ANS-verified badge to help users identify vetted agents.
GoDaddy’s ANS Registry has been designed to connect an AI agent’s identity to a specific domain name. Therefore, verification of ownership and organisational identity are easily possible. Travis Muhlestein, GoDaddy product and AI chief technology officer, said, “AI should move the world forward without putting people at risk. ANS makes that possible by providing responsible builders a clear badge of trust and giving every user a quick way to see who and what is behind an AI agent.”
By tieing agents’ identities to specific domains and verifying them before interaction, it’s hoped that an extra layer of trust will help organisations create cross-domain automations. Spoofed agents belonging to rogue domains will not be able to masquerade as those belonging to the ‘real’ domain as their cryptographic signatures will fail checks. The onus is therefore on developers (human or AI) to verify agents’ identities.
(Image source: “Binded Document” by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
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