We just used ai.google instead of google.ai as the canonical domain name for Google's AI initiative for precisely this reason. (We run .google and you can see the source code at https://nomulus.foo )
If I'm reading https://whois.ai/cgi-bin/register.py? correctly, I'm not sure it's strictly required - it might just delay our account by a month (it's not 100% clear IMO):
> We will email you a password after which you need to login and pay the $100, unless you are resident in Anguilla.
> After this we will send you a letter, fax and short text message (SMS) with codes on them. Please, be sure your information is correct so you can receive verifiaction codes. When you get these you need to login and enter them.
> We will also wait 3 months to make sure there is no problem with your credit card. But each successfully verification will decrease this period by one month, so if you pass all of them you do not need to wait 3 month.
Shame it's so arcane/expensive ($100 for account, then $100/2 years per domain) - there's a couple of joke domains I might have picked up if they were cheap enough (gomennas.ai / ebihara.ai [character from Persona4]).
I do appreciate that the TLD alone resolves though: http://ai./
FWIW, 101 Domains allows you to register a .ai domain (I registered zuse.ai there) and you don't have to do anything with a fax, etc. Now, maybe 101 has to fax something to somebody in Anguilla, but as the end user, you're isolated from that. Unless things have changed since I registered my domain.
Wouldn't that work like the old Compuserve or Prodigy email addresses? And if it would, wouldn't most email clients have to have "back-compatibility" with it?
