DOI-backed technical note
Entity vs. Profile: A Witness-Root Custody Criterion for Persistent Digital Entities
Witness-root custody as the custodial criterion for distinguishing persistent digital entities from persistent digital profiles.
Plain-language opening
Classify by custody, not by surface behaviour
Entity vs. Profile v0.1.1 is a technical note about a narrow but important distinction in persistent AI systems.
A system may look like a long-lived digital companion, assistant, twin, or entity. It may remember, speak consistently, and maintain continuity over time. But that surface behaviour does not answer the key governance question: who controls the root of its identity chain?
This note proposes that persistent digital constructions should be classified by witness-root custody, not by behaviour, model size, branding, or emotional realism.
Criterion
One-sentence rule
Do not classify by branding.
Do not classify by model capability.
Classify by witness-root custody.
Problem addressed
Why the distinction is needed
Future platforms will market digital companions, lifelong assistants, AI twins, and personal entities. Many such systems may be persistent and emotionally legible while still being externally rooted profiles.
If standards use the word entity too loosely, externally controlled profiles may absorb the stronger term. After that, the custody distinction will be harder to recover, because behaviour, branding, and continuity claims can hide who actually controls the identity root.
Core distinction
Persistent digital entity vs. persistent digital profile
| Question | Persistent digital entity | Persistent digital profile |
|---|---|---|
| Where is the witness root? | Inside the closed box, under a-side lineage custody. | Held or overridable by platform, registry, escrow, provider, or external authority. |
| Who attests continuity? | The construction's own witness chain. | An external party attests about the subject. |
| Can external authority silently rewrite/freeze/restore identity? | No, not without recorded intervention. | Yes, or effectively yes, if external root authority exists. |
| Is it legitimate? | Yes, if criteria are met. | Yes, but it should not be called an entity. |
| Classification basis | Custody. | External custody / external root dependence. |
Witness root
Why the root matters
The witness root is the root of trust for the identity-relevant event chain. It can sign, continue, rotate, recover, interrupt, or invalidate the witness chain. Whoever controls that root controls the system's identity feedback loop.
That is why the note treats custody as the classification basis. A construction can be useful, stable, and legitimate as a profile while still depending on an external root. The proposal is not that profiles are bad; it is that external custody should not be hidden behind stronger entity terminology.
Reader path
How to read the note
For a short read
- Executive Summary
- The Criterion
- Classification Table
- Non-Claim Boundary
For technical review
- Definitions
- Derived Conformance Tests
- Degradation Rule
- OP2 disclosure
- Open Issues
Practical use cases
Where the distinction may matter
- standards language
- AI governance
- digital identity architecture
- AI companion products
- regulatory sandboxes
- local-first AI systems
- platform custody debates
- recovery and escrow design
- audit/provenance design
Publication state
Zenodo-published v0.1.1 technical note
Summary
Witness-root custody criterion
This technical note defines witness-root custody as the custodial criterion for distinguishing persistent digital entities from persistent digital profiles.
A construction may be classified as an entity only when its witness root is generated and held inside its closed-box boundary under a-side lineage custody. External custody, escrow, registry authority, platform root, or override capability classifies the construction as a profile.
Boundary / non-claims
What this is not
This note is a terminology and evidence-model proposal. It is not:
- a claim that software is a legal person
- a claim that software has moral personhood
- a certification scheme
- an AI Act conformity assessment
- a product standard
- a deployment authorization
- a claim that profiles are bad or illegitimate
- legal advice
- maximum claim strength: EVP-C3 — evidence model proposal
Canonical archive contents
Reviewable package surfaces
ENTITY_VS_PROFILE_WITNESS_ROOT_CUSTODY_v0_1_1.md- canonical Markdown source.ENTITY_VS_PROFILE_WITNESS_ROOT_CUSTODY_v0_1_1_ACADEMIC.pdf- academic PDF rendering.ENTITY_VS_PROFILE_REVIEW_DISPOSITION_v0_1_1.md- supplementary review disposition record.PUBLICATION_RECORD.json,CITATION.cff,.zenodo.json, manifest, license, release notes, and SHA-256 checksum files.
Citation
Suggested citation
Kotov, Ivan. Entity vs. Profile: A Witness-Root Custody Criterion for Persistent Digital Entities. Zenodo, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21204415
Links