Shane Smith joins the good fight as Umanitek's Advisory Board member
Umanitek announced Shane Smith - founder of VICE and Emmy-winning journalist - to its Advisory Board, adding one of media's sharpest voices on AI, technology, and the risks facing young audiences online.
Zug, Switzerland, August 21, 2026 — Umanitek today announced Shane Smith joined their Advisory Board, deepening the company's bench of leaders focused on AI trust and safety.
Smith is the founder of VICE, the global youth media brand he launched in 1994 and built into an international network spanning digital channels, a television and film studio, a record label, a creative agency, and a book-publishing house - reaching hundreds of millions of viewers a month. An Emmy-winning journalist, he served as host and executive producer of the Emmy-winning HBO news series VICE, and has reported from some of the world's most isolated and difficult places, including North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Liberia, and Greenland. His honors include the Knight Innovation Award and the Environmental Media Award. Shane is also the recipient of several Peabody awards, Polk awards, and he was named Cannes Media Lions Media Person of the Year.
In recent years, Smith has trained his reporting on the real-world impact of artificial intelligence - investigating the rise of AI-driven and autonomous warfare, the use of AI-generated media and propaganda in modern information conflicts, and the economic disruption of automation. That work maps directly onto the challenges Umanitek was founded to address.
"I've spent my career reporting from the places most people look away from - and lately, that means the frontlines of AI, from autonomous warfare to the weaponization of information," said Smith. "Umanitek is building the guardrails that current moment demands, and I'm proud to help get it right."
"Shane has spent three decades understanding global audiences better than anyone, and his perspective will sharpen how Umanitek builds trust and safety into the AI era." said Chris Rynning, Chairman of Umanitek.
About Umanitek
Umanitek is a Swiss AI trust and safety company headquartered in Zug, building the infrastructure that keeps people and institutions verifiable in the AI era.
Umanitek's Guardian platform provides continuous monitoring, forensic evidence collection, and high-volume takedown enforcement against deepfakes, synthetic impersonation, and coordinated defamation.
TrueSeal verifies the origin and integrity of digital content, anchoring evidence on the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph so provenance is independently auditable and tamper-evident.
Guardian Elect extends this capability to democratic processes, protecting candidates, parties, and electoral authorities through campaign cycles. Umanitek serves enterprises, public-sector clients, and consumers, and is co-founded by an international team of successful entrepreneurs, including Aza Raskin, Chris Rynning, and Tomaz Levak.
Learn more at umanitek.ai.