University of Kwazulu-Natal

The Future Of Authentication Verified Trust In The Age Of Ai Forbes

Bonisiwe Shabane
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the future of authentication verified trust in the age of ai forbes

Peter Barker, Chief Product Officer - Ping Identity. As digital experiences grow more distributed—spanning devices, apps, platforms and now autonomous agents—every interaction can either build or erode loyalty and trust. Today’s users are increasingly discerning and security-aware, and far less tolerant of poor user experiences (UX). In fact, research shows that even when people love a product or company, 59% will abandon it after several bad experiences, and 17% after just one. AI is amplifying these expectations while simultaneously reshaping the threat landscape. Deepfakes, synthetic identities and AI-driven fraud have exposed the limits of traditional authentication methods, and consumer trust is at an all-time low as a result.

In fact, fewer than one in five (17%) consumers have full trust in the organizations that manage their identity data. For employers, AI has made it far too easy for bad actors to impersonate job candidates or help desk agents, gaining access to sensitive information and systems. As the boundary between human and machine interactions weakens, organizations must evolve beyond static security checkpoints toward stronger systems that can better recognize and respond to risk. The future of authentication in this environment lies in the continuous, contextual assurance of identity, also known as verified trust. Passwords, often considered the foundation of traditional authentication, are no longer strong enough to protect user identity and trust. They are difficult for users to manage, easy for attackers to exploit and increasingly irrelevant as the sophistication of cyberthreats outpaces legacy defenses.

Even with tools like password managers, complexity requirements and multifactor authentication (MFA), human error and phishing—along with other attack methods driven by AI—continue to expose organizations to risk. Luke Boddis, Senior Director - Global Business Development, Checkout.com. Since I can remember, verifying myself has always revolved around knowledge-based credentials, such as passwords, temporary codes or one-time passwords (OTPs) and security questions (somehow, I still forget what the name of my first... But these methods are fast becoming relics, if you will. As fraudsters evolve and consumer expectations shift, businesses are rethinking how they verify identity across digital journeys. The next frontier?

AI-powered biometric authentication. I specialize in identity verification and authentication, working closely with leading platforms across fintech, gaming and digital marketplaces to enhance trust, security and user experience. Within my role, I have seen all forms of fraud and how organizations should not just stay one step ahead but five. The password is dying, and I believe that’s a good thing in today’s world, as passwords are the weakest link. A 2023 report from Verizon revealed that over 80% of data breaches involve stolen or reused credentials. Even with additional steps like OTPs and email verification, bad actors continue to exploit loopholes using phishing, SIM swaps and social engineering.

You just have to look at the recent news surrounding Marks & Spencer to understand the magnitude of this problem. This has led to a resounding noise in tech and finance calling for the end of password reliance. Apple, Google and Microsoft are already championing passkeys, cryptographic tokens stored on devices and unlocked by biometrics. However, even passkeys are just one part of a broader movement toward frictionless, real-time identity. Rohan Pinto is CTO/Founder of 1Kosmos BlockID and a strong technologist with a strategic vision to lead technology-based growth initiatives. In an era where digital interactions prevail, securing online identities has become a major concern, especially as traditional techniques like passwords and SMS-based two-factor authentication become more vulnerable to attacks.

This is why many companies are exploring AI-powered identity verification. While these tools can improve security and usability, they also pose concerns about privacy and user experience (UX). Let's look at the potential and the challenges of these solutions. Biometric authentication uses unique physiological or behavioral attributes to authenticate identity, and AI has considerably increased its accuracy and adaptability. Modern facial recognition, for instance, uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to map facial traits into high-dimensional vectors. With this technology, AI can improve liveness detection by assessing micro-movements, texture and 3D depth to distinguish actual users from photographs or masks.

For example, Apple's Face ID employs infrared dot projection and on-device AI to prevent spoofing. In every industry built on human trust—from financial services to healthcare, aviation, enterprise tech, and even retail goods—one truth remains constant: trust is earned, and today, it must be scalable. For decades, leaders have invested heavily in digital transformation initiatives aimed at improving access, efficiency, and experience. But the new era isn’t about digitization—it’s about intelligent transformation. It’s about trust at scale, fueled by artificial intelligence. Internal team trust, and equally important - customer trust.

And for organizations that don’t evolve, the risk is clear: stagnation, obsolescence, and an eroding competitive edge in markets that move at the speed of innovation. Trust has always been fragile (in relationships, between teams, and with customers)—but in a hyperconnected, AI-powered world, it’s also increasingly dynamic. We’ve reached a point where human expertise and analog systems alone can no longer keep up with the complexity of modern demands. That’s where AI is emerging—not just as a tool, but as a foundational layer of how organizations verify, make decisions, and scale. As the founder of an AI-powered enterprise workforce technology company, my curiosity about the AI revolution runs deep—driven by a relentless fascination with how it’s reshaping every industry, redefining how decisions are made, how... A clear and lesser-known example of this shift comes from the luxury and collectibles space—a high-value sector projected to reach $37B globally by 2030.

You never know where the research will take you! Platforms like Alt Vault now use computer vision and AI to authenticate the quality of high-end retail goods like sneakers, watches, and handbags in under ten seconds, analyzing pixel-level details invisible to the human... As digital technology advances, the need for secure and reliable methods to prove humanness grows. Traditional identity verification systems focused on recognizing individuals—their identity, credentials, and access rights. However, in an age of AI bots, synthetic identities, and deepfake technologies, the paradigm is shifting. The future lies not in identifying people but in ensuring they are human.

Hence, it is crucial to explore why proving humanness is more relevant than ever and how new methods are emerging to meet this critical need. Historically, verification methods such as passwords, PINs, and physical tokens sought to authenticate individuals based on their identity. Over time, these systems evolved into more sophisticated approaches that analyzed physical or behavioral traits. While effective for access control, these systems were not designed to address the challenges posed by advanced AI bots and synthetic entities. AI technologies can now generate hyper-realistic images, videos, and interactions that mimic human behavior with startling accuracy. They exploit gaps in traditional systems by impersonating legitimate users or creating entirely fake identities.

As such, proving humanness has become a distinct challenge, separate from identity verification. The goal is no longer to determine "who someone is" but rather to confirm "that someone is human." In an increasingly digital world, the line between human and machine is blurring. AI agents are not only capable of impersonating humans in communication but are also adept at overwhelming systems designed for humans—from social media platforms to financial networks. This creates a pressing need for a verification system that ensures interactions online are truly human-driven. As more people use AI, the concept of "proof of personhood" becomes essential.

In a world rife with online impersonations, scams, multiple identities, deepfakes, and other deceptive AI-generated content, proof of personhood ensures that we are interacting with actual people. While fake content is not a new phenomenon, the ability to produce it at near-zero cost is. AI dramatically lowers the marginal cost of creating content that convincingly mimics real people or events, further eroding our ability to distinguish genuine interactions from fabricated ones. Uriel Maslansky is the CEO and Co-Founder of Atly. Every corner of the internet today is flooded with AI-generated content. Sometimes this content is harmless—or even helpful.

But AI remains prone to errors and misinformation continues to cloud the reliability of online advice. When users seek genuine human insights—like reviews for restaurants or experiences—they often encounter a frustrating mix of fake, outdated or low-quality information. The result is a minefield of content that's difficult to trust. This is more than a hunch. Google recently uncovered more than 10,000 fake listings on Google Maps, from phantom businesses to hijacked legitimate accounts. No wonder trust in the internet is unraveling.

Even Gen Z—often considered the most digitally fluent generation—is growing skeptical. One in three teens say GenAI makes it harder to trust the accuracy of what they read online. So how can tech companies rebuild trust? They must either replicate the authenticity of real-world recommendations or successfully aggregate genuine, crowd-sourced insight at scale. 🎉 Celebrating 10 Years of Excellence in Leadership and Community 🎉 In today’s Tech Pulse, gain insight into how:

Biometric identity systems are transforming trust in agentic AI, ensuring autonomous systems act with verified human consent. The passwordless future is redefining digital identity with phishing-resistant authentication, passkeys, and decentralized credentials. AI agent identity governance is becoming essential to manage lifecycles, prevent privilege drift, and eliminate security blind spots. Verified Trust or Identity Continuity? Irrespective of your preferred vernacular - hard to disagree that it’s much needed in a quickly evolving, AI driven threat landscape. The TLDR; “It’s a holistic identity approach that integrates security, assurance and fraud prevention to verify users continuously and contextually across every digital interaction.”

Home » Security Bloggers Network » Identity’s New Frontier: AI, Machines, and the Future of Digital Trust The identity industry stands at its most transformative moment since the advent of digital authentication. At Identiverse 2025 in Las Vegas, over 3,000 cybersecurity professionals witnessed a paradigm shift where non-human identities now outnumber humans by ratios exceeding 90:1, fundamentally reshaping how we think about access, trust, and security... This isn't just another technological evolution—it's the emergence of a new digital ecosystem where machines, AI agents, and human identities must coexist securely at unprecedented scale. The implications are staggering. Organizations are grappling with identity sprawl where 60% manage over 21 identities per user, while AI-powered attacks have surged 3,000% for deepfake fraud and 700% for AI-generated phishing.

Yet this same AI technology promises to revolutionize identity management through behavioral analytics, continuous authentication, and predictive threat detection. The industry has reached an inflection point where traditional perimeter-based security models are obsolete, and identity has become the new security perimeter. From an entrepreneurial perspective, this transformation represents both the greatest opportunity and the most complex challenge the cybersecurity industry has faced. The global identity and access management market is projected to grow from $19.8 billion in 2024 to $61.74 billion by 2032, driven not just by digital transformation but by fundamental changes in how digital... The most striking revelation from Identiverse 2025 was the sheer scale of non-human identity proliferation. NHIs now outnumber human identities by as much as 100:1 in DevOps environments, with service accounts, API keys, workload identities, containers, microservices, and AI agents creating an identity explosion that traditional IAM systems simply...

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