New leadership moves the Council from founding to governing the Trust Identity Protocol, an open standard proving who made digital content and how it was made.
NEWARK, NJ, UNITED STATES, October 29, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The AI Trust Council, the global body that governs the Trust Identity Protocol (TIP), has named Ross Thorpe, chief executive officer of the human-only social platform Rooverse, as its chairman. Thorpe succeeds founding chair Joshua D. Baron, president and founder of Baron’s EdTech Consulting and a former senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Baron stays on in a new role as senior fellow, advising the Council on growth, partnerships and open governance. The handover comes less than six months after The AI Lab first convened the Council, on May 3, 2026.
“I run a social network where the whole premise is that you’re talking to a real person,” Thorpe said. “When you are stood in front of someone, they are certain you are the creator of the words that come out of your mouth; it costs nothing, but means everything. The Trust Council is there to ensure that this same certainty can exist online, for the same cost as it does in the real world.”
“I could build the protocol, but nobody should have to trust it on my word,” said Dinesh Mendhe, who founded the Council and invented TIP. “That trust has to come from a Council where every side has an equal voice, and I can’t think of a better person to lead it than Ross.” Mendhe also thanked Baron for guiding the Council through its founding months. “Josh has led this Council since day one,” he said. “We’re grateful for what he built, and glad he’s staying on to advise us.”
Who is Ross Thorpe?
Thorpe is chief executive officer of Rooverse, a social platform built on verified personhood. He trained in psychology, biosciences, and philosophy.
He has already contributed to The AI Lab’s policy work, including its analysis of the European Commission’s proposed EU KIDS Act. His Council profile is at theailab.org/ai-trust-council/members/ross-thorpe.
Why It Matters
The internet was built to move information, not to keep track of who made it. Bots now account for more web traffic than people do: 51 percent in 2024, according to Imperva’s 2025 Bad Bot Report. And people struggle to tell what’s real. In a 2025 University of Reading study, participants with typical face-recognition skills identified AI-generated faces only 31 percent of the time. In 2024, a finance employee at engineering firm Arup sent about $25 million to fraudsters after a video call in which every other participant was a deepfake.
The pressure has grown sharply this month. Security researchers have nicknamed October 2026 “Black October” after a run of AI-assisted incidents, from critical flaws found with AI in the PHP programming language to breaches at developer platforms that exposed customers’ credentials. As attackers use AI to move faster, organizations need a way to prove which content and communications really came from them.
That is the case the Council exists to make: anyone should be able to see who originally made a piece of work, whether it is a document, a photograph, an artwork, a film or a podcast. TIP seals that origin at the moment of publishing, recording the creator, the time and whether the work has changed since, in a signed record no one can quietly alter. It makes no judgment about whether the content is true. The Council is the check and balance on that system. It sets and enforces the rules so the protocol’s principles and values hold, and so people have real grounds to trust the AI platforms they use. Now Thorpe leads that work.
TIP is available for enterprises to integrate now, and The AI Lab reports demand from organizations around the world. Developers can read the open specification at github.com/theailaborg/tip-protocol.
How the Council governs TIP
Under TIP, a creator verifies once as a real person. Each time they publish, their device signs the work and logs its fingerprint, the time and one of four origin labels: Original Human, AI-Assisted, AI-Generated, or Mixed. The labels are designed to align with the transparency obligations in Article 50 of the EU AI Act.
The Council gives equal weight to five constituencies: Creators, Institutions, Publishers, Operators and Partners. It accredits the Verification Providers who confirm a person is real and the Node Operators who keep the public record. Its bylaws allow it to suspend or revoke members who break the rules, and a Trust Tribunal hears disputes.
Fifteen independently owned Node Operators in eight countries hold copies of the record, so no single operator controls it. The network is growing quickly around the world. Each record is signed using post-quantum standards NIST published in 2024, so it should hold up even once quantum computers can break today’s encryption. Thorpe is associated with the Council’s United Kingdom Node Operator. Universities, newsrooms, NGOs, governments, platforms and standards bodies can join a constituency at theailab.org/ai-trust-council.
About the AI Trust Council
The AI Trust Council is the multi-stakeholder body that governs the Trust Identity Protocol. Founded by Dinesh Mendhe and convened by The AI Lab on May 3, 2026, under Charter v1.0, it gives five constituencies an equal voice. The AI Lab serves as its founding steward. AI TRUST COUNCIL is a registered trademark of The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc., U.S. Reg. No. 8483190. Members are listed at theailab.org/ai-trust-council/members.
About The AI Lab
The AI Lab Intelligence Unobscured, Inc. publishes the Trust Identity Protocol, operates the AI Trust Registry, and runs the Global Seal of Trust certification program for AI systems. Dinesh Mendhe founded it in January 2026 and serves as founder and chairman. Dr. Sofia Martinez is chief executive officer. Learn more at theailab.org.
Hema Dey
Iffel International Inc.
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