The International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for digital technologies, has launched a global initiative to develop standards for trusted digital identity and ensure increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence agents operate in a safe, accountable and trustworthy manner.

Announced on Thursday at the AI for Good Global Summit, the initiative establishes the ITU Focus Group on Trust and Identity for Humans and Agentic AI. The group will develop international frameworks to govern AI systems capable of acting independently on behalf of individuals and organisations.

As artificial intelligence evolves from assistive tools into autonomous agents capable of negotiating, making decisions, executing financial transactions and interacting with other AI systems without continuous human oversight, concerns over trust, identity and accountability are growing.

The ITU said that while agentic AI has the potential to deliver significant productivity gains, it also introduces new risks, including the possibility of AI agents impersonating individuals or organisations, carrying out unauthorised actions and operating across interconnected digital systems without adequate oversight.

“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 to ensure meaningful human oversight of AI systems, particularly in high-impact sectors such as financial services and critical infrastructure, where autonomous decision-making could have significant consequences.

According to the agency, as AI systems become increasingly capable of planning and acting independently, verifying the identity of AI agents and ensuring their behaviour remains trustworthy throughout their lifecycle will be critical to building confidence in their use.

The ITU explained that digital identity systems establish who is acting, while trust frameworks determine whether that actor can be relied upon, creating the foundation for secure, accountable interactions between humans and autonomous AI systems.