At a trendy venue near the San Francisco Pier, Sam Altman’s testing project World celebrated its next evolution and rapid expansion of its ambitions. And it starts with Tinder.
Tools for Humanity (TFH), which powers the World project, on Friday announced plans to integrate its verification technology into dating apps, event and concert ticketing systems, business organizations, email and other areas of public life.
“The world is moving toward very powerful AI, and AI is doing a lot of great things,” Altman told a packed crowd at Midway. “We are also moving towards a world where more things are generated by AI than by humans,” he added. “I’m sure many of you have thought to yourself, ‘Am I interacting with an AI or a human, and how much of each? And how do I know that?'”
World (formerly Worldcoin) differentiates itself from other identity verification services by providing the ability to verify that a real, live human being is using a digital service while protecting that person’s anonymity. There’s a complex cryptographic alchemy behind this (something called “zero-knowledge proof-based authentication”). The result: The company is creating what it calls a “proof of human” tool, a mechanism that can verify human activity in a world infested with AI agents and bots.
The primary tool for verification is a spherical digital reader called an Orb that scans the user’s eyes and converts the iris into a unique anonymous cryptographic identifier (known as a Verified World ID). You can use it to access World’s services, but users can also access World’s apps without the service.
Mr. Altman kept his remarks brief on Friday (TFH co-founder and CEO Alex Branier was absent due to recent hand surgery, Mr. Altman said). He then handed over the bulk of the presentation to World’s Chief Product Officer Tiago Sada and his team.
Sada explained that World plans to release the latest version of the app (the last version was released at the December event), adding a number of new integrations to its technology.
World has been preparing to introduce authentication services to dating apps, particularly Tinder, for some time. Last year, Tinder launched its World ID pilot program in Japan. The pilot was apparently a success, as World announced that Tinder would begin authentication integration in global markets, including the United States. The program integrates the World ID emblem into the profile of users who go through an authentication process, authenticating them as who they say they are.
World is also courting the entertainment industry with the launch of a new feature called Concert Kits. This feature allows music artists to reserve a set number of concert tickets for World ID-verified humans. This is designed to protect fans from scalpers who frequently use automated ticket-buying bots to buy up seats. The concert kit is compatible with major ticketing systems such as Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and the company is promoting the kit through partnerships with 30 Seconds to Mars and Bruno Mars, both of which will be used on upcoming tours.
There were many other announcements at the event, including those for companies. The Zoom/World ID verification integration aims to combat the supposed deepfake threat to business calls, and the Docusign partnership is designed to ensure signatures come from genuine users.
The company is also working on a number of features that look to the wild west of Agent Web. These include a feature called “Agent Delegation,” which allows individuals to delegate their World ID to agents to perform online activities on their behalf. A partnership with authentication company Okta has also created a system (currently in beta) to verify that agents are acting on behalf of humans. The system is set up so that a World ID can be associated with a specific agent, and when that agent goes out on the web and acts on that person’s behalf, websites will know that the authenticated person is behind their actions, Gareth Davies, Okta’s chief product officer, said at the event.
So far, World has been difficult to scale, primarily due to the validation process itself. For most of the company’s history, getting the gold standard required going into one of their offices and having your eyeballs scanned with an orb, which was a pretty inconvenient (not to mention weird) experience.
However, World has continued to make moves to increase ease of verification and incentive structures. In the past, it has given out the cryptocurrency WorldCoin to some members who sign up, and distributed orbs to major retail chains so users can verify their identity while out shopping or drinking coffee. The company has now announced that it is significantly expanding Orb’s customer base in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The company also promoted a service that allows interested users to bring an orb to World’s location for remote verification.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Sada also shared that World is trying to solve scaling issues by creating different validation layers. The top tier is Orb authentication, but below that, World previously offered a mid-level tier that used anonymous scanning of official government IDs via the card’s NFC chip.
The company also introduced a low-level tier that simply takes selfies, or what Sada called “low friction” (which I think means less effort, but also “less security”).
Selfie Check, which Sada’s team announced during the event, is designed to maintain user privacy.
“Selfie is private by design,” Daniel Scholl, one of TFH executives, said during the presentation. “This means taking full advantage of the local processing that takes place on your device or mobile phone. This means your images are yours.”
Selfie authentication is obviously nothing new, and scammers have been successfully disguising it for a long time. “Obviously we’re doing our best and it seems like one of the best systems around, but it has its limits,” Sada told TechCrunch. Developers looking to integrate World’s services can choose from three different validation tiers depending on the level of security important to them, he said.
