Know who created it.
Trust what you see, hear, and read.
TIP is a free, open protocol that lets real people prove their identity and label their content honestly - text, video, audio, images, podcasts, articles, and anything on the internet. The specification is open forever. Anyone can implement it. Anyone can run a node. No permission needed.
TIP in your feedTrust at a glance.
Click any VERIFIED chip above to see what the TIP browser extension actually pops up on that post. Unlike platform checkmarks, TIP proves biometric human identity and scored trust history. Not a payment.
AI can now generate indistinguishable text, images, video, and audio at near-zero cost. No human can reliably detect it by looking alone. TIP does not try to win an arms race against AI detectors; it creates a system where creators sign and declare the origin of their content before publishing. The burden of proof shifts from the reader to the creator, where it belongs.
Sources: NewsGuard AI Tracking Center (March 2026); Europol "Facing reality" report (2022); Stanford AI Index Report.
Get a verified Trust ID that proves you are a real, unique person. Post content with a signed origin label. Build a public trust score based on your honest track record. Your data stays private - always.
Label your work as human-created, AI-assisted, AI-generated, Mixed. Protect your reputation with cryptographic proof. Let your audience know exactly what they are reading, watching, or hearing.
Implement the open spec in any language. Add TIP headers to your site in 5 minutes. Run a full node to strengthen the network. No permission required. The protocol is CC-BY 4.0 - free forever.
TIP for imagesEvery photo, labelled.
Every image carries a TIP content label viewers instantly know if a photo is original, AI-enhanced, or fully AI-generated.
TIP for videoEvery frame, verified.
From news footage to AI-generated clips, TIP labels every video with its true origin so viewers always know what they are watching.
How the protocol worksThree layers, one protocol.
The protocol is open-source and free for individuals, journalists, nonprofits, governments, and small businesses. Anyone can run a node. Anyone can verify a badge.
For developersHow a post gets signed.
A signed payload, a canonical normalisation, a Trust Score query, and a verification trip across the federated DAG. The animation below traces a single piece of content end to end.
For developersUnder the hood.
Open network, URI anatomy, copy-paste fallback, server-side example, the full transaction grid, and the five trust tiers. Everything a developer needs to read the protocol at the data layer.
TIP Protocol is a federated network. The specification is permanently open (CC-BY 4.0). Anyone can implement it in any language. Anyone can run a node that strengthens the network. No permission required.
Every TIP interaction produces two types of permanent, resolvable URI. Understanding their anatomy makes the whole system readable at a glance.
You do not need the TIP browser plugin to share a verified post. When a creator copies their CTID and pastes it into a social media post, an email, a forum thread, or a chat message, TIP automatically appends a short verification line. Readers see the raw CTID followed by a friendly call-to-action. Anyone can click the link to verify the origin, even on platforms where the plugin is not installed.
Click to find out #HumanOrAI
The CTID renders as plain text in the post. A reader who clicks the link or the #HumanOrAI hashtag lands on the public verification page that resolves the CTID and shows the origin, the author trust score, and the dispute history.
The same CTID auto-renders inline as the full verification badge with the origin label (OH, AA, AG, MX), the trust shield, and a one-click verify action. No copy-paste needed.
The two-line fallback works on every platform that renders links: X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Reddit, Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Substack comments, Medium, and plain-text email. The hashtag #HumanOrAI aggregates these posts into a single discoverable feed across every social network.
John Smith publishes an investigative piece. He wrote every word himself, with no AI tools used. He selects Original Human, signs with his TIP-ID, and submits. Here is the complete TIP trail a reader, journalist, or platform can independently verify.
Every transaction is signed by the relevant party (creator, VP, or The AI Lab), gossip-broadcast to all nodes via TCP (port 4001), and appended to the Merkle DAG. The Merkle root is published every 6 hours. No transaction can be deleted or modified.
Every AI Trust ID badge displays a score from 0 to 1000 and a tier colour. Both update in real time as a creator publishes and their content is verified. You can see any creator's current tier on their badge without needing to understand the full score.
For institutions & organisationsRun a Node. Become a Verification Provider.
TIP is a federated network. Like the internet itself, it has no single point of control. Governments, banks, universities, publishers, and biometric companies can participate as infrastructure providers, running nodes that strengthen the network and earning the right to issue verified credentials to their own communities.
A TIP node is a server running The AI Lab's open-source reference implementation. It participates in the federated DAG, storing a copy of the trust ledger, validating new transactions, and answering badge verification queries. No accreditation required. Free to deploy.
A Verification Provider is an accredited organisation that performs the four-layer biometric verification stack and issues TIP-IDs to real people. VPs sit between the user's device and the trust network. They are the identity backbone of TIP, the organisations whose verification is trusted by the whole network.
Every VP's jurisdiction classification is published in the public VP registry and shown to users at the point of registration. Institutions in higher-risk jurisdictions are not excluded; they are disclosed, and users choose with full information.
The TIP network is a trust graph. Its value grows with every new node, every new VP, and every new verified identity. Institutions that join early become founding nodes in the trust ledger; their verification history becomes part of the permanent DAG record. A university whose faculty have been TIP-verified for three years before a competitor joins has a three-year head start in academic trust credibility that no amount of money can buy after the fact.
The first government to become a TIP VP sets the verification standard for its citizens' credentials on the global network. The first bank to issue TIP-IDs becomes the default trust anchor for its customers' online identity. Early participation is a permanent structural advantage, not a temporary promotion.