Epoq unveils open AI handoff protocol for verified experts

By AI, Created 8:46 PM UTC, June 01, 2026, /AGP/ – Epoq published ATAH, an open protocol designed to move users from AI systems to verified human professionals in regulated fields like insurance, legal, healthcare and financial services. The release aims to solve AI discoverability and trust gaps as consumers increasingly use chatbots for advice and platforms need a standard way to route them to real experts.

Why it matters: - ATAH is designed to create a neutral trust layer between AI chatbots and verified professionals, which could affect how users find licensed experts in regulated industries. - The protocol also addresses a discoverability problem for professionals as AI systems increasingly replace traditional search. - Without an open standard, visibility inside AI conversations may tilt toward the largest brands and the biggest marketing budgets.

What happened: - Epoq announced that founder and CEO of Epoq North America Grahame Cohen published ATAH, the Agent to Authenticated Human Protocol. - The framework is open, released under Apache 2.0, and published independently of Epoq. - ATAH v0.8 is out as a release candidate for technical review. - The company invited developers, AI platforms, standards organizations and professional bodies to review the specification and build reference implementations.

The details: - ATAH is meant to move users from AI systems to verified professionals across insurance, legal, healthcare and financial services. - The protocol is built around two functions: discovery and handoff. - In discovery, an AI agent asks ATAH to find verified professionals that match a user’s situation. - ATAH returns candidate professionals with the source and date of each verification attached. - Out-of-date, unlicensed or otherwise ineligible records are filtered out before the AI sees them. - ATAH does not rank, score or recommend candidates. - The AI platform decides which candidates fit the user’s needs. - In handoff, ATAH moves the user from the AI conversation to a working introduction with the chosen professional. - For regulated work, the professional confirms conflict, scope and fees before contact details are shared. - Personal data moves through a transient encrypted vault instead of central storage and is erased after retrieval. - The protocol is designed to help professional organizations such as medical boards, bar associations, licensing authorities, engineering institutions and accounting bodies expose authenticated member and licensing data to AI platforms. - ATAH is intended to let those organizations keep control over verification, privacy and governance. - An overview of ATAH is available at ATAH protocol overview. - The full specification, schemas and governance documents are available on GitHub. - Epoq also linked to more information about partnership opportunities at Epoq.

Between the lines: - Cohen framed ATAH as infrastructure for trust, not a product layer owned by one company. - The protocol’s release reflects a broader concern that identity, consent and provenance standards will otherwise be shaped by opaque commercial systems. - Cohen said the goal is to establish open rules before paid placement and bad incentives become the default trust model in internet discovery. - Cohen developed ATAH after more than 25 years building digital legal services at Epoq and working with insurance and financial services partners in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. - The release also signals an effort to make AI search more accountable by tying answers to verified human expertise instead of guesswork.

What’s next: - Developers and standards groups can now review ATAH v0.8 and contribute feedback. - AI platforms and professional bodies can test how the protocol handles verified discovery and secure handoff. - If adopted, ATAH could become a shared layer for routing AI users into compliant human consultations in regulated services.

The bottom line: - Epoq is trying to define the plumbing for how AI systems hand users off to verified professionals, before the market settles on closed, pay-to-play alternatives.