Identity Digital has signed an agreement with the Government of Anguilla to provide registry services for .ai domain registrations. As a result, .ai domains will be transitioned to the Identity Digital registry platform on January 15, 2025.
To facilitate the transition of .ai domains to the Identity Digital platform, the current .ai Registry Platform will be offline starting January 15, 2025, at 13:30 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Identity Digital will then perform scheduled maintenance from 18:00 to 21:30 UTC to import the .ai top-level domain (TLD) and its sub-zones (.com.ai, .net.ai, .org.ai) into their platform.
See the list of affected domains here:
What to Expect
Maintenance Duration: The maintenance is expected to last up to 3.5 hours.
No Impact on DNS Resolution: The .ai domain’s DNS resolution will not be affected during this maintenance.
Temporary Service Interruption: While the maintenance is underway, some registry services may be temporarily unavailable (registrant contact update, DNS update, etc.)
Why this Change?
Given the rise in popularity of .AI TLDs worldwide, stronger security measures are a must-have for the domain.
Up unto this point, the domain has been managed directly by its source provider – the Government of Anguilla. When the domain was used primarily as a Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD), this worked out fine. But now since .ai is being adopted by more and more tech companies to represent Artificial Intelligence, balancing the entire operation on one small island (Anguilla) poses significant risks.
Identity Digital offers a solution to this problem. According to their recent article:
“Starting January 15, 2025, all .ai names will be hosted by Identity Digital’s global server network and robust anti-abuse regime, mitigating threats and decreasing downtime. Our platform will offer global businesses and entrepreneurs a secure and reliable online destination.”
This partnership brings with it a number of benefits:
- Mitigates the risk of frequent or extended downtime for .ai websites caused by natural or digital interruptions local to Anguilla.
- Resists DDoS attacks and other cybersecurity threats due to running on Identity Digital’s robust cloud infrastructure.
- Future-proofs the .AI domain, allowing companies to adopt the TLD with new confidence in reliability and security.
At 101domain, we have witnessed first-hand the remarkable boom of .ai domains in the last few years. Many businesses (such as this one) are already using the domain to great effect, and with this new partnership with Identity Digital, the .ai domain will only become more relevant.