Ken Griggs — Founder & CEO of Julia.social — will present Not.Bot at Mond(ai)y Coffee on Monday, July 27.

What are you building?

not.bot helps people distinguish humans from bots online now that AI can convincingly emulate people. Its first go-to-market use case is signing content so anyone can verify it: when publishers consistently sign their work, viewers can identify content falsely claiming to be from them. Future uses include AI-proof CAPTCHA and Sybil defense, document signing, and age verification.

The core idea

not.bot is a maximally privacy-protecting form of digital identity. Privacy is Julia.social’s corporate ethos: Julia, the character in Orwell’s 1984, best maintains her personal agency by protecting her privacy.

What’s working / not working

Working: The global app lets users scan signatures and enroll from U.S. app stores. A data-escrow partner captures user data; blockchain smart contracts are complete and open-source; the multiparty-computation engine, co-developed with Galois, is complete. Website integration components are released as not.bot Verify. The process-binding technology supporting honest.bot is implemented in not.bot Verify. The signing technology is patent-pending, and the not.bot and honest.bot trademarks are secured in the U.S. and multiple foreign jurisdictions.

Not working yet: The team is building not.bot Sign My Work, the initial GTM focus, targeting delivery by the end of August. Next come in-person enrollment and honest.bot.

Open questions

• Where do you post, and what do you post?
• Would you sign your content if you could?
• Have you or someone you know been deepfaked? What was the impact?
• Have you created a deepfake? How easy, difficult, or realistic was it?

Spicy take

Between the KIDS Act (including KOSA, COPPA 2.0, and the SCREEN Act), the GUARD Act, Texas HB 1181, and Florida HB 3, age verification is coming to the U.S. internet. It has already arrived in places including the UK, France, Brazil, and Australia.

If we only discuss one thing

What will it take to get people to enroll in not.bot?