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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for digital technologies, has launched a new global initiative aimed at developing standards for trusted digital identity and ensuring artificial intelligence (AI) agents remain accountable and trustworthy as they become increasingly autonomous.
The initiative, announced during the AI for Good Global Summit on Thursday, establishes the ITU Focus Group on Trust and Identity for Humans and Agentic AI, which will develop international frameworks to govern AI systems capable of acting independently on behalf of people and organizations.
The move comes as AI evolves beyond assistive tools into autonomous agents that can negotiate, make decisions, execute financial transactions and interact with other AI systems without continuous human intervention.
What the ITU is saying
The Union stated that while agentic AI promises significant productivity gains, it also introduces new risks, including the possibility of AI agents impersonating individuals or organizations, carrying out unauthorized actions and interacting across interconnected digital systems without sufficient oversight.
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- “The future of AI depends on trust,” said ITU Secretary General Doreen Bogdan Martin.
- “As AI becomes more autonomous, we need to work together across industry, governments, academia and civil society to ensure the greatest possible confidence in AI systems,” she added.
The ITU said the new Focus Group will develop frameworks that preserve meaningful human control over AI systems, particularly in high impact applications such as financial transactions and the operation of critical infrastructure.
More insights
According to the agency, as AI systems gain the ability to plan and act independently, establishing the identity of AI agents and ensuring their behaviour remains trustworthy throughout their lifecycle will become essential.
The organization explained that digital identity systems establish who is acting, while trust frameworks determine whether that actor can be relied upon, providing the foundation for secure interactions between humans and autonomous AI systems.
Debora Comparin, Co Chair of the Focus Group, said AI agents are expected to play increasingly important roles in economic and digital activities.
- “AI agents will soon negotiate, transact and make decisions on our behalf. Before that future becomes reality, we need common international foundations that establish who these agents are, when they can be trusted and how people will remain in control,” she said.
Her fellow Co Chair, Amir Banifatemi, said the initiative seeks to create globally interoperable and accountable AI systems.
- “Identity tells us who is acting and trustworthiness tells us how that actor can be expected to behave. Bringing these together creates the common foundation needed for interoperable, accountable and trusted AI systems at global scale,” he said.
Developing global standards
The Focus Group is open to technical experts as well as specialists in policy, law and regulation.
Among its priorities are developing common terminology and definitions, reference architectures for identity and trust, interoperability mechanisms for digital identities and credentials, trust frameworks and lifecycle assurance models, security benchmarks for continuously assessing AI agents and a roadmap for future international standardization.
The group will report to ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU T) Study Group 17, the organization’s expert group responsible for security standards.
According to Arnaud Taddei, Chair of Study Group 17, the ITU is moving quickly while ensuring the governance foundations for autonomous AI are carefully developed.
- “We know the direction and broadly what we want to build. We are now assembling the right leadership and structure, and AI for Good is exactly where we will meet the partners that would like to join us,” he said.
The Focus Group will hold its inaugural meeting in Paris in November 2026, followed by a second meeting in Geneva in January 2027.
What you should know
The ITU initiative comes amid concerns that AI is advancing at a pace that regulators can’t keep up with.
Earlier this week, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, called for coordinated global rules to ensure the technology is used safely and responsibly.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, stakeholders have also been calling for the regulation of AI to ensure the country does not miss out on the technology’s economic gains.
Speaking recently at the AI Summit 2026 in Lagos, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CarbonAI, Debola Ibiyode, said while AI presents enormous opportunities for economic growth, its long-term success depends on building public trust through responsible regulation and what she described as “AI Diplomacy.”
