Frequently asked questions

TIP Protocol (Trust Identity Protocol) is an open, patent-pending standard developed by The AI Lab. It helps you verify who created a piece of content and how it was made.

It brings more transparency to online content by clearly showing whether something is:

• Human created
• AI assisted
• AI generated

TIP works across platforms and can be used by anyone.

You can get your TIP ID at vp.theailab.org/get-verified, the official verification portal by The AI Lab.

Be careful: if any other site asks for TIP ID payment or registration fees, it is not from us.

A TIP ID is completely free for individuals, journalists, educators, nonprofits, and governments. You verify your identity once, and your TIP ID works for life on every platform that supports TIP.

Think of it like an email address: free to get, yours forever, works everywhere.

TIP works on Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Firefox, and Safari. The website will automatically detect your browser and show the right install steps.

Note: the TIP extension works on desktop browsers only, but you can complete the verification on your phone.

Yes. You can complete the entire verification on your phone. Some features (like the browser extension) only work on desktop, but your TIP ID works on both mobile and desktop.

TIP ID and AI Trust ID refer to the same personal identity issued by TIP Protocol. They are interchangeable terms.

CTID (Content Trust ID) is different. It is attached to a specific piece of content that has been signed or labelled by a TIP ID. One TIP ID can issue many CTIDs over time, one per published item.

If you upload a photo where the ID sits inside a larger background (table, hand, sofa), our reader struggles to extract fields cleanly because OCR runs over the whole image and the document becomes a small fraction of the pixels.

To fix this, the page detects the document boundary on upload using lightweight edge analysis in your browser, then perspective-corrects the photo to a tight rectangle around just the ID. You always see a banner with two buttons:

• Use original reverts to the photo you actually uploaded.
• Adjust crop opens the manual cropper with the detected box pre-positioned, so you can fine-tune.

If we can’t find the document confidently, we leave the photo alone and show a hint suggesting a tighter crop. If the server-side OCR still struggles after upload, the page surfaces the same hint based on how many fields actually came back.

Yes. Liveness analysis runs entirely in your browser. The camera feed is processed locally in real time. No video is ever transmitted.

Only a single captured frame is included with the final application, used once for face matching against your government ID. We do not retain it after verification completes.

The liveness check runs multiple independent anti-spoofing layers in parallel. Any one failing fails the check.

• Texture analysis (MiniFASNet). A neural net trained to spot phone screens, photos, and printed prints. It runs on three frames during the scan.
• Moiré FFT. A camera filming a screen produces a beat pattern between sensor and screen pixel grids. We detect that.
• Active screen flash. The page flashes a random sequence of colors and measures the reflected light on your forehead. A pre-recorded video cannot react in real time.
• 3D structure. The face mesh tracks 468 landmarks with depth coordinates. A flat replay collapses depth variance; a real face shows clear nose-to-ear depth.
• Parallax during head turn. Real heads move differently from the background. A flat replay shifts uniformly.
• Random challenge order. Blink, turn left, turn right are issued in randomized sequence so a recorded video can’t pre-satisfy them.
• rPPG (heartbeat). Subtle skin-color variations from blood flow are sampled from your forehead. Recorded video tends to lose this signal.

Browsers do not expose iPhone TrueDepth or Android time-of-flight sensors directly. The above software-based 3D verification is what major banks and identity vendors use for the same reason.

No, we do not store your biometric data. We only use a face scan during verification to match it with your ID. Once the verification is complete, it is not saved.

You can recover access on a new device by importing your encrypted .tip.json backup at /signin and unlocking it with the date of birth on your verified ID.

If you have not made a backup, you can also re-issue with the same identity through the standard verification flow on the new device. Your verification history carries forward.

Individual. The Begin Verification button on vp.theailab.org/get-verified is for every human, including creators, journalists, photographers, podcasters, freelancers, students, and anyone who writes or shares online. You get a personal TIP ID that you sign your own work with. It is free and one-time.

Verified Publisher is a separate review reserved for organizations: news outlets, publications, agencies, and multi-author teams that publish content under an organizational name. To apply for that, go to theailab.org/contact and choose Apply to become Verified Publisher as the enquiry type.

If you write under your own name and represent yourself, you are an Individual. If you represent an organization that publishes under an organizational identity, that organization applies separately. The two can coexist: a journalist working for a Verified Publisher news outlet still gets their own personal TIP ID.

Passport, driving licence, and national ID card. Which types are available depends on what your country issues. Picking your country shows which document types apply.

Yes. Photos taken on iPhone are usually saved as HEIC (Apple's high-efficiency format), and the upload accepts them directly. We convert HEIC to JPEG in your browser before sending the image to our servers, so there's nothing extra you need to do.

If you're on a desktop browser that cannot read HEIC and the upload fails, open the photo in Photos and re-export it as JPG, or upload directly from your iPhone.

Some countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and others) do not issue a unified national ID card. For those countries, verify with your passport or driving licence instead.

The portal shows a country-specific note explaining which document types apply, with the national flag and a one-line reason. You always have at least one valid path.

Origin codes describe how a piece of content was created. Every CTID carries one. The simplest way to choose the right one is to ask a single question:

Who is the author?

Common scenarios

The AA vs MX trap

The most common confusion is between AA and MX. The line is sharp:

• AA · one author (you). AI is a tool you used along the way to refine, edit, or rephrase what you wrote.
• MX · two authors. Some sections were written entirely by you. Other sections were written entirely by AI. Each section has a different author.

If you removed MX, you would force people into AA or AG when neither is honest. A research paper where the human wrote the methodology and an AI generated the literature review is not AA (you did not write the literature review) and not AG (you wrote the methodology). It is genuinely mixed. That is what MX is for.

The code is part of every CTID and is publicly verifiable. Honest declaration is rewarded across the protocol.

A CTID (Content Trust ID) is a cryptographic signature that binds a specific piece of content (post, video, image, article) to your TIP ID and an origin code.

Anyone can verify it at /verify-record without contacting any central server.

The trust score is a public number associated with each TIP ID, derived from verification quality, content history, and protocol-defined signals. Scores update over time as the identity remains in good standing.

Yes. The TIP DAG supports a correction CTID that supersedes a previous one. You issue a new CTID referencing the original; verifiers see the latest status when they look up the record.

Yes. Weibo (微博) is a first-class supported platform alongside X/Twitter, Truth Social, Threads, and the rest. Pick Weibo from the platform list when registering content.

Available content types match how Weibo works:

• Weibo. Up to 2,000 characters of text (Weibo raised the limit from 140 in 2016).
• Weibo + image. Text plus an image.
• Weibo + video. Text plus a video URL.
• Weibo thread. A series of connected posts.

Post URLs follow either https://weibo.com/{user_id}/{post_id} or the mobile https://m.weibo.cn/status/{id} shape. Weibo allows post edits with visible edit history (since 2018), so pasting the CTID into the body after registration works straightforwardly.

Long-form Weibo articles (长文) up to ~10,000 characters can be registered using the generic Article type with the article URL.

Yes. WeChat (微信) is supported as a first-class platform. Because WeChat is a multi-product app, four distinct creator-content surfaces are available:

• WeChat Moment. A text post on Moments (朋友圈), up to ~2,000 characters.
• Moment + image. Image plus caption on Moments.
• Channels video. A short video on WeChat Channels (视频号).
• Official Account article. Long-form article published via mp.weixin.qq.com.

Edit policy varies by surface:

• Moments: a very short edit window. If your Moment is already permanent, paste the CTID in a self-comment on the post.
• Channels: edit the description from the Channels admin app.
• Official Account articles: editable any time, paste the CTID in the article body.

Public Official Account permalinks follow https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/.... Moments and Channels are app-first surfaces; we hash whichever URL or text content the surface exposes.

Yes. Truth Social is a first-class supported platform alongside X/Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and the rest. Pick Truth Social from the platform list when registering content.

Available content types match how Truth Social actually works (it is built on Mastodon, so the model is familiar):

• Truth. Up to 500 characters of text.
• Truth + image. Text caption plus an image.
• Truth + video. Text caption plus a video URL.
• Truth thread. A series of connected Truths.

Post URLs follow the pattern https://truthsocial.com/@username/posts/.... After registration we generate a CTID that you paste into your Truth's body. Truth Social allows post edits with visible edit history, so the paste itself is straightforward.

ReTruths (boosts of someone else’s Truth) are not a content-creation event. You only register a CTID for content you author yourself.

Yes. Mastodon is a first-class supported platform. Pick Mastodon from the platform list when registering content.

Mastodon is a federated, ActivityPub-based microblogging network. Many instances exist (mastodon.social, mastodon.online, mas.to, fosstodon.org, infosec.exchange, hachyderm.io, and many more), and TIP works with all of them because the wire format is identical. Pick the platform once; paste any instance URL when prompted.

Available content types:

• Mastodon post. Up to 500 characters of text. The reference Mastodon limit; some instances allow more.
• Mastodon + image. Text caption plus an image.
• Mastodon + video. Text caption plus a video URL.
• Mastodon thread. A series of connected posts (self-replies).

Post URLs follow the pattern https://{instance}/@username/{post_id}, for example https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109399894586815521. After registration we generate a CTID that you paste into your post's body. Mastodon 4.0 (October 2022) and later support post edits with visible edit history, so the paste-after-registration flow works the same as on Truth Social.

Boosts (re-shares of someone else's post) are not a content-creation event. You only register a CTID for content you author yourself.

1. Sign in on vp.theailab.org.
2. Open the identity menu in the top-right corner.
3. Choose Connect another device.
4. Authenticate with your signing password or biometric.
5. A QR code appears (it may animate through several frames for ML-DSA-65 keys).
6. On the second device, open the TIP mobile web app or browser extension, choose Scan QR Code, and point the camera at the screen until every frame is captured.

Your private key is encoded in the QR and never sent to any server. Treat the screen like a one-time passcode: only scan it on a device you own.

From the verification portal, click Download Browser Plugin. The portal auto-detects your browser and shows the right install steps with animations. Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Firefox, and Safari are all supported.

On your phone, open the verification portal and tap Install Mobile Web App. The button only appears on iOS and Android. Once installed, the app launches like any other home-screen app and supports labelling content offline.

• Android (Chrome / Edge / Brave): tap Install. The browser shows its native install dialog; tap Add to confirm.
• iOS (Safari): the page shows the three-step Add to Home Screen instructions, because Apple does not expose a programmatic install API. Tap the Share button, choose Add to Home Screen, then Add.

The button hides itself once the app is installed or if you dismiss it for the session. If you ever want to re-trigger the prompt, clear your site data for vp.theailab.org.

Yes. The TIP plugin for WordPress is built for bloggers, news organisations, and multi-author publications running their site on WordPress. Once installed, every post you publish is automatically signed with your TIP-ID and gets a CTID (Content Trust ID) that readers can verify without trusting any single platform.

Where to get it:

• Today (direct download): on the verification portal, scroll to the For bloggers & publishers card and click Download Plugin (.zip). Upload the zip via WordPress Admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
• Coming soon (WordPress.org): the plugin will be listed in the official WordPress plugin directory so you can install it directly from your site's Plugins screen with one click. We'll update the verification portal with the listing link the moment it goes live.

Compatibility: WordPress 6.0 or newer. Free and open source. Works on self-hosted WordPress sites and on WordPress.com Business+ plans where third-party plugins are allowed.

Who is this for? If you write a blog, run a news site, or publish long-form content on WordPress, this plugin saves you from having to manually create a CTID for every post on /register-content. The plugin handles signing and CTID registration automatically as part of your publish flow.

Yes. On the Sign In page tap Scan QR code at the top of the no-key flow. Your camera opens with a frame guide. The same single button works for both QR sources:

• From another phone or laptop running TIP: on the signed-in device, open Connect another device from the identity menu and authenticate with your signing password or biometric. Point your phone's camera at the QR.
• From the desktop browser extension: open the TIP extension, click DEVICES → Connect Mobile → Show QR Code. Point your phone's camera at the QR.

Either way the scanner accumulates frames (ML-DSA-65 keys animate in 7 frames) and shows progress dots. Once every frame is captured, the page verifies ownership against the network and asks how to re-secure the key on this device (biometric or signing password).

Your private key is encoded in the QR and never sent to a server. The Use a file instead button inside the modal switches you back to the .tip.json import path if the camera is unavailable. Browsers without the BarcodeDetector API (Firefox, older Safari) automatically load a small jsQR fallback so the scanner works everywhere.

Click the Sign In button on the home page (right under "Download Browser Plugin"), then upload your .tip.json backup file. If it is a v2 encrypted backup, you will be asked for the date of birth on your verified ID to unlock it.

Once unlocked, your TIP ID is connected on this device. You can then use Connect another device to pair further devices.

We are in a public preview window before permanent issuance launches. You can run the full verification flow today; the TIP IDs and CTIDs issued during preview reset on launch day so we can roll out permanent issuance with finalized network parameters.

The slim banner at the top of every page shows the launch countdown. You can join the launch waitlist with one click.

Preview TIP-IDs and CTIDs reset at launch. We notify everyone who joined the launch waitlist, and re-issuance is one click on the same device.

Your verified identity history (liveness, ID match, passkey binding) carries forward; only the issued numbers change.

Your email is stored on our verification server and used only for two things: a quick confirmation right after you sign up so you know you are on the list, and a single launch announcement when permanent TIP-IDs go live. We never share or sell waitlist emails.

You can request removal at any time at [email protected]. After the launch announcement, the waitlist is deleted.