The Presence Authority is the independent governance standards body for AI-mediated digital representations of real persons. We publish and maintain the Digital Presence Integrity Framework — the deployment-level standard that defines what controlled, accountable digital representation looks like.
The Digital Presence Integrity Framework (DPIF) is a deployment-level governance standard for AI-mediated digital representations of real persons. It specifies the controls required to preserve identity fidelity, consent integrity, delegated authority boundaries, and accountability when a real person's face, voice, or communicative presence is deployed at scale. DPIF is published by The Presence Authority under CC BY 4.0 and maintained on GitHub.
DPIF is the deployment-level governance standard for AI-mediated digital representations of real persons. It specifies the controls required to preserve Presence Integrity — and defines what happens when those controls fail.
The technology to create digital representations of real people — photorealistic avatars, synthetic voice clones, AI-mediated video embodiments — is operational. Organisations are deploying these systems across customer service, executive communications, education, and regulated industries.
The governance infrastructure has not kept pace. Most deployments operate without formal controls over identity fidelity, communicative authority, consent boundaries, or audience disclosure. The result is a systemic risk that DPIF defines as Presence Drift: the erosion of identity fidelity, delegated authority boundaries, consent integrity, or accountability caused by persistent or scaled digital representation.
Presence Drift may occur gradually and invisibly. A translated message subtly shifts meaning. An avatar's likeness degrades across model updates. Consent granted for one context extends into another without re-authorisation. Authority delegated for informational use escalates to material decision-making.
The EU AI Act is now in force. Regulatory scrutiny is intensifying. The window to retrofit governance is narrowing.
The first organisations to undergo formal DPIF assessment establish the empirical foundation of the standard. This is a limited programme. We are onboarding a small first cohort.
Organisations with active AI avatar, synthetic voice, or scaled digital presence deployments are the natural fit. Regulated sectors — financial services, healthcare, education, professional services — are particularly relevant given the EU AI Act timeline.
The self-assessment runs through all 18 DPIF controls and applies the same non-compensatory logic used in formal assessments. If any Critical Presence Control fails, the deployment fails — no maturity score compensates for it.
If the result identifies gaps you recognise, a formal assessment is the logical next step. Use it to orient internally before a conversation with us.
The DPIF instrument suite is published under CC BY 4.0. No paywall. No registration. The standard is public — the services that implement it are not.
Bobbie spent twenty years building and protecting some of the world’s most iconic luxury brands — pre-opening strategies for Rosewood, six hotel launches simultaneously across Southeast Asia, rebrands across Egypt, Dubai, Jordan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. She understood, viscerally, that a brand is a promise about identity.
Then she watched AI start replicating people’s identities with no governance in place. Working inside the AI avatar industry, she saw the same pattern repeat: consent was vague or absent, people had no clear understanding of what would happen to their likeness, accountability fell into a void. She went looking for the standard that should have existed. It didn’t exist. So she and Brad built it.
Brad’s career has been built on turning complex disciplines into rigorous, usable frameworks. At Firefly Education he led award-winning curriculum products through a print-to-digital transition, winning multiple Australian Educational Publishing Awards. At Library For All he built content systems serving global audiences.
When Bobbie brought her observations to him, he saw the same governance gap from a different angle. He designed the DPIF architecture: evidence-based controls, non-compensatory logic, and a certification system built for deployment-level assessment — a curriculum instrument applied to governance, rigorous enough for regulators and clear enough for practitioners.