To use information existing in Reality within governance processes, it must be possible for machines to recognize what the information is and what attributes it possesses in a machine-readable form. In I2EA, this stage is defined as “Fact.”

Consider, for example, a single image. A human can immediately recognize that it is an image. For governance to be applied computationally, however, recognizing only that “this is an image” is insufficient. It is important to structure and process the attributes required for subsequent decisions, such as the image ID, file format, creator, creation timestamp, copyright status, consent for AI training, confidentiality, whether it was AI-generated, language, and Hash.

Umecohming assigns such attributes to digital content and makes them available as machine-readable information. Importantly, Umecohming does not evaluate the value or appropriateness of the content. For example, the attribute “Training Consent: No” does not itself constitute a final decision that the image must not be used for AI training. Rather, it describes, in a form that machines can reference, the state that consent for training has not been granted for that image.

Similarly, attributes such as “Confidentiality: Public” and “AI-Generated: No” do not themselves permit or prohibit any action. They provide information that can subsequently be used by Evaluation and Policy to determine which rules are relevant.

Fact also does not imply that the meaning of the content has been fully understood. What matters at this stage is to structure, to the extent possible, verifiable attributes of information obtained from Reality and make them available for reference by subsequent processes.

Accordingly, Fact in I2EA does not refer simply to a “fact” in the ordinary sense. Rather, it refers to a state in which information observed or obtained from Reality is represented as machine-readable information accompanied by identifiable attributes.

By structuring information from Reality as Fact through Umecohming, a foundation is established for carrying that information forward into subsequent Evaluation, Policy, and Decision processes.