The German Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) has cleared a way for artificial intelligence to be used for identity verification in Germany.
With the publication "Video identification with automated procedure" for automated optical identity verification by Bundesnetzagentur in cooperation with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), AI-based solutions for the verification of customers are now approved for certain use cases in Germany in addition to the proven methods.
The published order is based on the German Trust Services Act, which implements the eIDAS Regulation in Germany. The catalogue of criteria published by Bundesnetzagentur and BSI prescribes high technology standards for automated identity verification. Vendor IDnow, which has been commenting on the move, says it is one of the few European providers that has already been officially confirmed with other methods by Bundesnetzagentur within the scope of an accredited conformity assessment and is now also already working on the confirmation for AutoIdent.
With its product IDnow AutoIdent, IDnow is one of the providers for automated identification, and in 2012, IDnow filed a patent application for fully automated identification procedures, which has been granted by the European Patent Office. "We are pleased that the regulatory authorities have now finally opened up to technological development in Germany and we see our efforts and years of research into the development of our own AI technology confirmed," says Armin Bauer, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of IDnow. In addition to this patent, IDnow holds other patents and patent applications at the European level.
IDnow's technology uses so-called Deep Learning to perform an identification at the same security level as a personal identification – for example in a branch. For this purpose, the self-developed artificial intelligence, automatically recognises the security features of the ID documents in a video stream and performs a biometric face comparison of a video selfie with the ID document. This is complemented by new security mechanisms such as a "liveness detection" that prevents attacks through recorded videos and photos.
IDnow sees the regulator's decision as an important step towards a digital society in Germany and as a fundamental turning point for German companies in international market comparison. The established and very successful services such as the electronic ID card, BankIdent or the VideoIdent procedure can now be supplemented with AI-based AutoIdent methods for new use cases. IDnow expects a significant change for German consumers:
