28 July 2025 (Agentic identity kickoff)

Due to a technical glitch, this meeting recording comes in two parts:

Attendees

  • Alan Karp

  • Andor Kesselman, DIF

  • Andrew Dworschak, Yakoa

  • Andy Parsons, Adobe

  • Andy Rosen, Sequence Key

  • Eric Scouten, Adobe

  • Erik Passoja, SAG/AFTRA

  • Gavin Peacock, Adobe

  • Karla McKenna, GLEIF

  • Kim Hamilton Duffy, DIF

  • Jen Tse, Adobe

  • Jeremy Uzan, Universal Music

  • Juan Caballero, DIF

  • Lauren Langsner, Adobe

  • Leonard Rosenthol, Adobe

  • Makki Elfatih, HKDolts

  • Massy Mahamli, Adobe

  • Michael Klein, Adobe

  • Misha Deville, Vidos

  • Nicholas Salvemini, Adobe

  • Nicky Hickman, Digital Egret

  • Peleus Uhley, Adobe

  • Philippe Mougin, AFP

  • Rand McKinney, Adobe

  • Santiago Lyon, Adobe

  • Scott Perry, Digital Governance Institute

  • Wenjing Chu, Trust Over IP / Futurewei

  • Will Kreth, HAND (Human & Digital) Identity

Agenda (focus on agentic identity)

Time stamps are in recording part 1 until otherwise noted.

New members and invited guests introduction

  • 🎥 6'26": Nicky Hickman, Digital Egret

  • 🎥 7'07": Wenjing Chu, Trust Over IP / Futurewei

  • 🎥 7'40": Alan Karp

  • 🎥 8'22": Andy Parsons, Adobe

  • 🎥 8'37": Santiago Lyon, Adobe

  • 🎥 8'53": Rand McKinney, Adobe

  • 🎥 9'12": Jen Tse, Adobe

  • 🎥 9'26": Michael Klein, Adobe

  • 🎥 9'45": Nicholas Salvemini, Adobe

  • 🎥 10'15": Erik Passoja, SAG/AFTRA

Defining a shared use case

🎥 13'55": Eric proposed the following use case as an organizing rubric:

Proposed use case for agentic identity in CAWG

At time X, content creator Alice (human or organization) invokes text-chat agent B which invokes image-generation agent C, which produces still-image content D, which is ultimately returned to content creator Alice. Alice then posts asset D to social media.

At time Y, content consumer Emily finds asset D. She has questions about how this asset was created and submits it to a C2PA verification site. The report contains information about Alice’s identity and the role of agents B and C in producing the content D.

Time Y could be arbitrarily later than Time X — anywhere from minutes to years later.

DISCUSSION:

  • Is this a problem worth solving? Enthusiastic yes.

  • Suggested amendments to proposed use case:

    • Adopt Leonard’s Proposed terms and definitions:.

    • Important to encode version of agent/tool as capabilities will evolve over time.

    • Spell out more about what Emily’s questions about the content are. Some proposed examples:

      • Is Alice really Alice? *

  • Suggested variations on the proposed use case:

    • Asset D gets published/circulated prior to having been returned to Alice.

    • Asset D is created maliciously in Alice’s name by one or more agents.

  • Limitations on CAWG’s scope:

    • Transactional authentication and authorization is handled by other protocols and out of scope for CAWG.

    • Documenting what chain of delegation was used is in scope for CAWG.

    • Documenting rights and payment expectations remain out of scope for CAWG. (Refer such topics to JPEG Trust.)

🎥 26'30": Leonard proposed that we adopt the following definitions:

Proposed terms and definitions:
Tool

a stateless operation where you pass all parameters in a single call

You need an agent when you have more than one tool and you require state between the tools plus there is additional logic that may be required NOTE: Some tool models support returning information to the caller (such as for HITL interaction)
Skill (aka workflow)

a system where the set of operations across multiple tools/agents/etc is predefined and hardcoded. EXAMPLE: a prepare for web skill that would know to do things such as color convert, optimize and save as PDF/A

Agent

a system, with a defined (but possibly mutable) goal, that can dynamically direct its own process (and possible tool usage), usually backed by an xLM.

Review of existing protocols

🎥 34'39": The primary protocols/mechanisms for interacting with and discovering agents appear to be:

DISCUSSION:

Of these, only AGNTCY appears to have even a discussion of agent identity that could outlive a specific transaction or interaction. (In terms of the use case above, any understanding of the identity of agents B and C doesn’t live beyond Alice receiving the content back from B.) General consensus that this assessment is correct, with the caveat that NANDA may also be exploring this space.

🎥 41'06": Makki Elfatih gave a presentation outlining the current state of major agentic protocols and the authentication and authorization mechanisms that are included here.

Makki’s slide deck (PDF)

Relevant links:

Interaction with / collaboration with C2PA

🎥 1h01'05": C2PA has its own AI task force. Historically, the boundary between C2PA and CAWG has been that C2PA provides standards for what hardware and software implementations of C2PA can directly attest to and CAWG provides standards for human-sourced metadata and attribution.

Most of the discussion about this topic is in recording part 2 (29m).

DISCUSSION / OUTCOMES:

  • C2PA will host discussion about tool identity when there are not humans in the loop.

  • CAWG will host discussion about agent identity and documenting delegation of authority when there are humans (including organizations) in the loop.

  • There’s a related discussion with DIF about object capabilities APIs, which may be partially related.

  • Call for C2PA to build more of an ecosystem of related standards and SDOs.

ACTION: Andor, Scott, and Eric to meet later this week to discuss upcoming AI identity task force and how CAWG relates to it and to draft a charter for CAWG AI task force if applicable.

CAWG web site proposed update

🎥 21'19": Team at Adobe have been working on a proposed redesign of the CAWG web site, which was shared in the meeting. The redesign can be viewed in the video (starting at 21'58") or by downloading and building from PR #11 "Draft home page revision".

FEEDBACK:

  • Tagline should say "attribution" not "authorship."

  • Home page text should talk about CAWG’s role as an SDO and avoid talking about (directly) "empowering" content authors.