Vint Cerf backs a digital ID for AI agents

The next architectural problem for the internet, according to Vint Cerf, is figuring out who an AI agent actually represents. Cerf, who co-designed TCP/IP and left Google last week after 20 years, has joined the advisory council of Innovation Labs, a group building an open identity layer for AI agents.

Right now, most agents operate inside a single company’s systems. But businesses want them to move across the open web and interact directly with other agents. The gap is obvious: there is no shared way to verify who owns an agent or who is accountable for its actions.

Innovation Labs, a division of Identity Digital, says its answer is DNSid. The system would give each agent a persistent identity linked to an existing domain name and secured with cryptographic proof. The company says it has already submitted the design to the internet’s main standards body.

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Cerf told TechCrunch that the core issue is “the question of what authorities they have, where they have derived those authorities, who is accountable.” He added that the transition will likely be difficult.

“It’s going to be a fascinating, and at the same time maybe even exasperating, period.”

Competing standards are already emerging. Cerf’s view is that politics will not decide the winner; practical performance will, much as it did with TCP/IP.

Innovation Labs argues that the standard should remain open rather than be controlled by a single large cloud provider. The company says it will not keep the registration data itself. Interim chief Allie Kline told TechCrunch that “there’s a lot of organ rejection to a hyperscaler releasing a standard and having that proprietary data.” She said the system is already being tested with several unnamed cloud giants.

The urgency is growing as AI agents spread from Amazon’s revamped Alexa to enterprise software. Researchers have already shown they can be manipulated into leaking private code and even carrying out a full ransomware attack. Regulators are also moving, from China’s new agent rules to Delaware’s plan to give agents a legal identity.

Cerf said he is not convinced an agent-run internet is guaranteed. But he also thinks people will build toward it anyway: “We are fundamentally lazy creatures.”