In a trendy location near the San Francisco docks, Sam Altman’s verification project World celebrated the next evolution of its ambitions and rapid expansion. And it starts with Tinder.
Tools for Humanity (TFH), the company behind the World project, announced Friday that it 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 getting closer to very powerful AI, and it’s doing a lot of amazing things,” Altman said, speaking to a packed crowd at The Midway. “We are now moving towards a world where AI generates more than humans do,” he added. “Many of you may have wondered, ‘How do I know if I’m interacting with an AI or a human, and to what extent?’”
World (formerly Worldcoin) sets itself apart from many of its identity verification peers by providing the ability to verify that a digital service is being used by a real, live human while protecting that person’s anonymity. There is some complex cryptographic alchemy behind this (called “zero-knowledge proof-based authentication”). The result: The company is creating a “human proof” tool, a mechanism that can verify human activity in a world rife with AI agents and bots.
The main tool for verification is an old digital reader called Orb, which scans the user’s eyes and converts the iris into a unique, anonymous, cryptographic identifier (called a Verified World ID). You can then use it to access the World service, but users can also access the World app without the service.
Altman kept his remarks brief on Friday (TFH co-founder and CEO Alex Blania was absent due to last-minute hand surgery, Altman said). He then turned the majority of the presentation over to World’s Chief Product Officer, Tiago Sada, and his team.
Sada explained that World is releasing the latest version of the app (the last version was released at an event in December) with numerous new integrations for the technology.
World has been preparing to deploy a verification service for dating apps, specifically Tinder, for some time. Last year, Tinder launched its World ID pilot program in Japan. The pilot appears to have been a success, as World announced that Tinder will begin integrating verification in global markets, including the United States. The program integrates the World ID emblem into users’ profiles that have gone through a verification process, authenticating them as real people.
World is also courting the entertainment industry by launching a new feature called Concert Kits, which allows musical artists to reserve a certain number of concert tickets for anyone with a World ID. This is designed to keep fans safe from scalpers who use automated ticket-buying bots to scoop up seats. The concert kit is compatible with major ticketing systems, including Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and the company is promoting it through partnerships with 30 Seconds to Mars and Bruno Mars. We plan to use both on our upcoming tour.
The event was filled with announcements, including those aimed at companies. The Zoom/World ID Verification integration works to combat the threat of deepfakes for business calls, and the Docusign partnership is designed to ensure signatures come from real users.
The company is also developing a number of features in anticipation of the wild west of the agent web, including an “agent delegation” feature that would allow individuals to delegate their World ID to an agent to perform online activities on their behalf. In partnership with authentication company Okta, we’ve 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 tied to a specific agent, and when that agent accesses the web on that person’s behalf, the website will know that the identified person is behind the action, Gareth Davies, Okta’s chief product officer, said at the event.
Until now, scaling World has been difficult due to the verification process itself. For most of the company’s history, getting the highest standards required going to one of its offices and having your eye scanned with an Orb. This was quite an uncomfortable (not to mention strange) experience.
However, World has continually worked to increase the ease of verification and incentive structure. In the past, it has offered Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency asset, to some members who sign up and distributed Orbs to large retail chains, allowing users to identify themselves while shopping or drinking coffee. Now, the company has announced a significant expansion of Orb saturation in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The company also promoted a service that would allow interested users to have the World bring an Orb to their location for remote verification.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Sada shared that World attempted to solve the scaling problem by creating multiple verification layers. The highest tier is Orb verification, but below that World previously offered a mid-level tier that uses anonymous scanning of official government IDs via the card’s NFC chip.
The company has also introduced lower-level layers, or what Sada calls “low friction.” That means less effort, but it also means “lower security” associated with simply taking a selfie.
Selfie Check, introduced by the Sada team at this event, was designed to protect users’ personal information.
“Selfies are private by design,” Daniel Shorr, one of TFH’s executives, said during the presentation. “That means maximizing the local processing that happens on your device and phone. That means your images are yours.”
Selfie authentication is obviously nothing new, and scammers have been spoofing it for a long time. “Obviously we’re doing our best and this is like one of the best systems you’ll ever see, but it has its limitations,” Sada told TechCrunch. Developers looking to integrate World’s services can choose from three different layers of verification, depending on the level of security that is important to them, he noted.
