Media Technology · Founded 2022

Identify.Attribute.Monetize.

Trust · Automation · Measurement

Human & Digital delivers Identity Intelligence and data services for notable public figures in Cultural Industries — Athletes, Actors, Creators, Producers, Directors, Musicians, Voice Artists, and both the legal likenesses and fictional characters they bring to life.

Explore Services The HAND Standard →

2.7M+

IDs Registered · 10M+ Candidate Pool

Live count

3.5B+

DOI Resolutions / Month · Global DOI System

ISO

26324:2025 Aligned

Human & Digital — Identify. Attribute. Monetize.

Who We Serve

The Cultural Industries — in full

HAND IDs are not for corporate HR pipelines or recruitment funnels. They are career-long, globally unique identifiers for notable public figures who drive cultural value. Our scope spans every corner of the Cultural Industries — from major professional leagues and their player associations, to NCAA athletic compliance, to the global guild and union ecosystem across film, television, and music.

🏆

Sports

Professional athletes, coaches, and broadcasters across major leagues and federations globally — plus player associations, NCAA athletic compliance departments, and sports labor organizations navigating NIL, CBA negotiations, and career-long identity management.

🎬

Film & Television

Above-the-line talent — Actors, Directors, Producers, Writers, and Cinematographers (SAG-AFTRA, DGA, WGA, IATSE) — and the characters they portray.

📱

Creator Economy

Independent creators, influencers, and digital-native talent building multi-platform careers — with a portable, verifiable identity credential that travels with them.

🎵

Music

Recording artists, session musicians, songwriters, composers, and Voice Artists — across labels, independents, and the AFM.

🎮

Gaming & Virtual

Esports athletes, virtual humans, AI-generated personas, legal likenesses, and the fictional characters that drive franchise value.

🎭

Live & Performing Arts

Theatre, dance, comedy, and live performance artists — the full creative spectrum, from Broadway to touring productions worldwide.

“If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize or measure it.
If you can’t measure it — you can’t monetize it.”

Clyde Smith · SMPTE Life Fellow · Emmy Award Recipient · IABM Honorary Member

What We Do

Professional Services
for the Media Supply Chain

Every service anchors to a single principle: notable public figures must be accurately identified, attributed, and protected for the full arc of their careers, globally. This is not about slowing innovation. It is about ensuring that innovation is defensible, measurable, and sustainable.

⬡

Identity Intelligence

Transform complex identity data into ethical, actionable insights. Named Entity Resolution, public figure analytics, and IDMaaS — grounded in Trust, Automation, and Measurement. If you can’t identify something, you can’t measure it.

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⭈

HAND ID Registration

Issue globally unique, freely resolvable talent identifiers for public figures across media, entertainment, sports, and the creator economy. Built on the DOI^® system — governed by the DOI Foundation as the ISO 26324 Registration Authority, running on the Handle System infrastructure created by Dr. Robert E. Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP.

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⭗

Meta-Tagging & Data Labeling

Granular attribution of every talent, character, and rights holder in your media assets. Rights-ready IP that creates a chain of custody for human likeness — comparable to provenance systems in art and IP.

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⬜

Data Transformation

Convert raw media data into structured, analytics-ready formats. ETL/ELT pipelines, data warehousing, cloud migration, and BI solutions built for the media enterprise. Manual processes won’t scale.

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Ready to put this to work? Let’s Talk →

Why Now

The media industry has solved content identification.
It has never solved talent identification.

The die has already been cast: AI, automation, and synthetic media are here, and they’re transforming how stories are made, distributed, and monetized. Likeness, voice, and performance can now be replicated, recombined, and deployed at machine speed.

But the systems governing consent, attribution, and authorization are still rooted in a slower world — contracts, emails, spreadsheets, institutional memory. The result is not just confusion or inefficiency. It’s risk. Reputational risk, legal risk, moral risk.

HAND exists because automation without trust breaks systems. The future of media cannot require choosing between scale and human agency. The real failure has been trying to scale without structure.

“Standards are how values endure. Infrastructure is how ethics scale.”

Force 01 — Legislative

EU AI Act Article 50 transparency duties, California’s AI Transparency Act (AB 853, phasing in from January 1, 2027), CA AB 1836 and AB 2602, and NY S.8420-A are on the books — and the federal NO FAKES Act remains in play in Congress. Together they create structural incentive for studios, platforms, and agencies to adopt verifiable talent IDs.

Force 02 — Labor & CBA

The newly ratified SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical contract, the expiring MLB–MLBPA agreement, and player-association engagement across the NFL, NBA, NHL, and international federations put likeness consent and AI-use terms at the bargaining table — and every one of those terms needs a neutral, portable way to say who.

Force 03 — AI Provenance

Synthetic media and AI-generated likenesses have made talent identification a trust and authenticity crisis. C2PA can attest the chain of custody of a file. HAND attests who is in it. Provenance without resolution is a label on an empty box.

Force 04 — NCAA NIL

The NCAA NIL era has created an identity verification and compliance infrastructure gap across college athletic departments — with hundreds of thousands of student athletes requiring verifiable, portable identity credentials for endorsement and licensing.

The window is open. Let’s Talk →

The HAND Standard

Human & Digital founded
HAND. They are distinct entities.

Human & Digital, Inc. is the for-profit media technology company that conceived, developed, and commercializes services built on the HAND identifier ecosystem.

HAND — The Universal Talent Identifier is an independent Delaware non-stock, nonprofit corporation and standards body (501(c)(6) application pending). It maintains the identifier registry, sets governance policy, and operates in the public interest of talent across cultural industries.

This structure is intentional. A neutral, nonprofit-governed standard earns broader adoption across competing commercial interests. H&D’s commercial services create the sustainable infrastructure that makes that standard viable in practice.

Visit hand-id.org ↗

Human & Digital, Inc.

humandigital.tech

For-Profit

↓ founded & funds ↓

HAND — The Universal Talent Identifier

hand-id.org

Nonprofit

Registry Stats

2.7M+

IDs Issued · Live

3.5B+

DOI System Resolutions/Mo.

2022

Founded

Leadership

The Team

Will Kreth

Founder & CEO

Ex-Exec. Director EIDR.org · Showtime · Apple · Time Warner · Founding team & first employee, WIRED · 4 startups · 3 patents

John Carlucci

Acting CTO

Ex-Sony · Clearleap (IBM) · 31 Patents · Media supply-chain, DRM, AI & identity systems · MSEE, Cornell

Joey Anuff

Lead Agentic Developer

Co-founder, Critical Metrics (with Will Kreth) · HotWired · Co-founder, Suck.com · AI developer, Office of Reid Hoffman · VH1 series development · Co-author, Dumb Money

Gabriel Berger

CCO

Ex-CEO Think Analytics · 3 startup exits · Deep media technology commercial leadership

Wynne Kim

VP Data Policy & Standards

Ex-Microsoft · Google · DoubleClick · 1 startup exit · 2 M&A exits

Helen Marzec

VP Marketing Strategy

Behavioral economist · Startup ecosystem & VC associate · Angel investment & scout networks

Steven Frank

Compliance Advisor

Fraud & AML prevention · Streaming music (Pandora) · Co-creator, Music Fights Fraud coalition

Jeff F. King

Advisor & Angel Investor · Partnerships

Hollywood producer, writer & director · CAA client · Holds a HAND ID · Creative community signal and relationships

H HAND ID

Renard T. Jenkins

HAND Board Chairman

Past President, SMPTE · President, HPA · Warner Bros. Discovery · PBS · Two national Emmys · Peabody Award

Get In Touch

Let’s Talk

Human & Digital is a business-to-business company. We work with studios, leagues, agencies, guilds, platforms, and technology partners that are serious about identity infrastructure. Tell us who you are and what brought you here.

Are you contacting us on behalf of an organization? Yes — I represent a company, league, guild, agency, or platform No — I’m an individual (e.g. asking about my own HAND ID)

Full Name

Organization

Work Email

Area of interest

Investors: please use the Investor Relations page. Membership in the HAND standards body is handled at hand-id.org.

What brings you here?

Identify.Attribute.Monetize.

The Cultural Industries — in full

Professional Servicesfor the Media Supply Chain

The media industry has solved content identification.It has never solved talent identification.

Human & Digital foundedHAND. They are distinct entities.

The Team

Let’s Talk

Professional Services
for the Media Supply Chain

The media industry has solved content identification.
It has never solved talent identification.

Human & Digital founded
HAND. They are distinct entities.