What is the Human Gate?
The Human Gate is the control point at which a real human must approve an AI's world-affecting action before it runs. A world-affecting action is anything that changes the outside world: a payment, a write to a system of record, a message sent on your behalf, or a deletion. At the gate the action is held until a person, distinct from the AI, approves or refuses it. No autonomous path may bypass it.
What is the Human Seal?
The Human Seal is the signed, tamper-evident proof that the human approval happened. When a person approves an action at the gate, the system issues a receipt that records who approved, the exact action they saw (bound by a content hash), and when. It is signed with a cryptographic key and can be verified by anyone, offline, with no call back to the issuer.
How can I prove a human approved an AI decision?
Issue a signed receipt at the moment of approval that records the approver's identity, a hash of the exact action they saw, and the time, signed with a cryptographic key. Anyone can verify it offline. That is the Human Seal, and it resists tampering and swapping the action after approval. You can try the verifier at humanseal.world/verify.html.
How do I meet the EU AI Act human oversight requirement?
Put a human gate in front of every world-affecting action your AI takes: a real person, distinct from the AI, must be able to review, approve, override or stop the action. Article 14 requires human oversight for high-risk AI. A Human Seal receipt records each approval, giving you evidence that oversight occurred. This supports, but does not by itself establish, compliance.
What is an audit trail for EU AI Act Article 12?
Article 12 requires high-risk AI systems to automatically log events over their lifetime so they can be traced. A Human Seal receipt is a signed log entry for each approval or refusal, bound to the exact action and the approver, and verifiable offline. That supports the record-keeping obligation.
What does POPIA section 71 require for automated decisions?
POPIA section 71 says a person may not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that has legal or material effect, and must be given an opportunity for human intervention. Inserting a human approval step removes the solely-automated trigger, and a signed receipt is evidence that the human was involved.
Does a Human Seal prove the human made a good decision?
No. It proves who approved what, when, and under which conditions. The receipt can record what the approver was shown and how long they took, so a rubber stamp shows up in the data instead of hiding in it. It is an audit instrument, not a guarantee of good judgment.
Can an AI approve its own action?
No. The approver must be a real, individually identified human distinct from the AI that proposed the action. Proving the approver is a present human and not a delegated agent is the hardest open problem in the field, and it is the aim of Level 3.
Is the Human Seal free?
The Human Gate standard is open and free to implement, like Bluetooth. The Human Seal mark is controlled so that where it appears it means something. There is nothing to buy to keep a human in charge.
Who runs the Human Seal?
The standard was founded and incubated by FLOCORE, which is also its first reference implementation. The intended neutral steward is HumanGate International, which is still being formed: it is not yet incorporated and has no members yet. The registry lists one system today, the reference implementation. We would rather say that plainly than invent a coalition.
How do I verify a Human Seal?
Paste the receipt into the verifier at humanseal.world/verify.html. Your own browser checks the Ed25519 signature offline, against the receipt's own key, and, if you supply the action, checks that it is the exact action that was approved. The conformance page gives the exact rules and test vectors so you can build your own verifier.
Does the Human Seal make me legally compliant?
No. Conformance supports compliance but does not by itself establish it. Compliance depends on your full system context and on qualified legal counsel.