AI is the buzzword at every conference and webinar across industries, and higher education and credential verification are no exception. Everyone is wondering how AI will reshape these fields—what it will enable, where it will fall short, and how it can be used responsibly.

How We Use AI

Let’s be clear upfront: Veri Once does not use AI to verify documents. Our verification process remains entirely reliant on direct source authentication with Blockchain immutability. However, we do leverage AI for efficiency gains in the generation of evaluation reports.

At Veri Once, we have carefully integrated AI into one specific part of our credential evaluation workflow. We use computer vision to extract relevant data from academic transcripts, which is then populated into our internal reporting system. This automation streamlines administrative tasks, allowing our evaluators to focus on the more analytical and interpretative aspects of credential assessments.

As our Director of Evaluations, Juan Garibaldi, puts it:

“Our team saves 45 minutes per report because we’re no longer manually entering data. We love it—it lets us focus on the best part of evaluations, the analysis.”

It’s crucial to emphasize that AI does not play any role in the actual verification or evaluation of academic credentials. Every document still undergoes thorough source verification, and AI is not used to determine equivalencies or make analytical judgments—those tasks remain firmly in the hands of our expert evaluators.

AI’s Potential in Verification: Where We Stand Today

While AI-driven tools can assist with efficiency, our testing has shown that they are not 100% accurate—even for something as straightforward as extracting transcript data. Our team still acts as a quality control checkpoint, ensuring accuracy before the information is used in reports. This is a reminder that AI, while powerful, still requires human oversight to ensure reliability.

At the same time, fraudulent credentials are becoming easier to forge, replicate, and tamper with. The sophistication of document fraud is increasing at an alarming rate, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish genuine records from counterfeits. In this environment, the only real solution is direct verification from the source, paired with tamper-proof blockchain-based authentication methods.

The Future of AI in Verification

Our stance on AI today is clear: it is an efficiency tool, not a verification tool. But AI is evolving rapidly, and our perspective may shift in the years ahead.

If you ask me this same question in two years, my answer may be very different. As AI advances, it is also making it easier than ever to generate perfect replicas of documents. The only way to combat this is by strengthening verification methods through blockchain-stamped authentication and other robust security measures.

For now, AI is a valuable tool for speeding up processes—but when it comes to verification and evaluations, human expertise and direct source blockchain-secure authentication remain non-negotiable.