HAND Human & Digital updates IdentityWeek.net on forming a new non-profit arm, which will establish HAND’s system as an industry-wide standard.
It started as an ID registry for talent within media, culture and entertainment industries, which gives back trust and integrity to well-known people and their public images. The registry was founded in 2015 and has found a digital identity use case, which has gone from niche to mainstream, owned by high-profile natural persons.
The for-profit business of HAND Human & Digital continues its operations, whilst seeking global standardisation frameworks to move ahead through its trade association.
This new entity will oversee what is being recognised as the world’s first global B2B Talent ID registry, a platform designed to enhance the “visibility, royalty tracking, and revenue attribution for distinguished legal and natural persons”.
HAND has processed over 4.4 million unique talent identifiers, from which approximately 120,000 globally unique, freely resolvable IDs have been verified.
Human & Digital, Inc., the original for-profit entity behind HAND, will continue its operations, offering advanced data transformation services, business analytics, and predictive insights to support the ecosystem built around the registry.
Will Kreth, HAND Human Digital & Universal Talent Identifier, spoke to us on the new endeavour as the demand to protect well-known people is more regarded as ever. More often, with the rise of deepfakes and fraud, fraudsters are advancing their tricks with deepfaked imagery and media, targeting celebrities to impersonate and complete the deception of fraud. Their images are distorted whilst appearing life-like.
In the future where virtual reality, metaverse, and AI-generated content will escalate, the threat will intensify, so HAND’s role is evolving fast to protect their worthy mission.
On the expansion of their philosophy, we asked Will Kreth:
- How do you measure success in those three areas – savings, security, and revenue – when clients adopt HAND’s Talent ID system? What metrics or KPIs do you track?
Their pitch emphasises enabling “cost savings, greater security, and revenue acceleration” in media supply-chains by standardising how talent (human, virtual, or fictional) is identified and verified.
- Which of these sectors (entertainment, sports, gaming, etc.) currently drives the most demand for HAND IDs — and where do you see fastest growth in the next few years?
HAND claims to support the identity of “legal & natural persons, their connected Digital Replicas, and fictional characters,” covering entertainment, sports, gaming, fashion, and news/politics.
- How do you balance large legacy clients with studios or archives, versus emerging virtual-talent / “digital replica” clients? What different needs do they bring to HAND?
The company has launched a separate governance entity, HAND – The Universal Talent Identifier, as a Public Benefit Corporation or non-profit trade association to help scale and govern the Talent ID standard.
HAND’s identity framework, which uses a unique ID to combat deepfakes and streamline royalty payments for both real and virtual talent, is the perfect example of the future of identity that the Non-Human Identity and Authentication & Verification sessions at both Identity Week America and Identity Week Europe are designed to explore. Join NHI, deepfake, and digital ID experts from iProov, Huawei, Hopae, Elexon, OWASP Foundation, Ahold Delhaize, and more across both events in 2026!
