Sam Altman’s in a luxurious location near the San Francisco Pier inspection draft The world marked its next evolution and the rapid expansion of its ambitions. And it starts with Tinder.
Tools for mankind The company behind the world project (TFH) announced on Friday that it plans to integrate the verification technology into dating apps, event and concert ticketing systems, business organizations, email and other arenas of social life.
“The world is getting closer to very powerful artificial intelligence, and it’s doing really cool things,” Altman told a packed crowd at The Midway. “We are now moving into a world where more artificial intelligence will be created than humans.” “I’m sure many of you are wondering, ‘Am I communicating with an AI or a human, or how much of each and how do I know?’ moments you feel like (there were moments).
World (formerly Worldcoin) differentiates itself from many of its identity-verifying peers by offering the ability to verify that a real, live person is using a digital service, while preserving that person’s anonymity. There’s some complicated cryptographic alchemy behind it (something called “zero-knowledge proof-based authentication”). The result: The company creates what it calls “human evidence” tools are mechanisms that can check human activity in a world full of artificial intelligence agents and bots.
Its primary means of authentication is a spherical digital reader called the Orb, which scans the user’s eyes and converts their iris into a unique and anonymous cryptographic identifier (known as an authenticated World ID). This can then be used to access World services, although users can still access World’s app without one.
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 over much of the presentation to Global Product CEO Thiago Sada and his team.
Sada explained that World has released the latest version of its app (latest version has been activated at an event in December), along with many new integrations for its technology.
The world has been gearing up for a verification service for dating apps for some time now – most notably, Tinder. Last year, Tinder was one World ID pilot program in Japan. This pilot was apparently a success, as World announced that Tinder will begin integrating verification in global markets, including the US. The program integrates the World ID emblem into the profiles of users who pass the verification process, thus confirming them as a real person.
World is also engaging the entertainment industry by launching a new feature called Concert Kit, where music artists can reserve a certain number of concert tickets for people verified by World ID. This is designed to ensure that fans are safe from the scalpers who often use it automated ticket purchase bots cover the 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 – both of whom plan to use it for their upcoming tours.
The event was filled with many other announcements, including some aimed at businesses. A Zoom/World ID verification integration is trying to combat the supposed deep fake threat to business calls, and the Docusign partnership is designed to ensure that signatures come from genuine users.
The company is also working on a number of features on the Wild West edge of the agent network, including what it calls “agent delegation,” where a person can delegate their World ID to an agent to act online on their behalf. A partnership with the authentication firm Okta has also been established system (currently in beta) confirms that the agent is acting on behalf of the person. The system is designed so that World ID can be tied to a specific agent, and then when the agent goes online to act on that person’s behalf, websites will know that the verified person is behind the behavior, Gareth Davies, Okta’s chief product officer, said at the event.
It has been until now scale is difficult for the worldmainly related to the verification process itself. For most of the company’s history, to get the gold standard, you had to go to one of its offices and have your eyeballs scanned by an Orb—a fairly inconvenient (not weird) experience.
However, the World is constantly making moves to increase the ease of verification and the incentive structure. In the past, he made his offer crypto assetWorldcoin to some members who registered and distributed their Orbs large retail chains so users can authenticate themselves while shopping or drinking coffee. Now, the company is announcing a significant expansion of Orb saturation in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company also promoted a service where interested users could bring the Orb to their location for remote inspection.
Speaking to TechCrunch, Sada also shared that World tried to solve the scale problem by creating different levels of verification. The highest level is Orb verification, but below that World has previously offered an intermediate level that uses an anonymous scan of an official government ID card via the card’s NFC chip.
The company also introduced a low-level, or what Sada calls “low-friction” — which I think means low-effort, but also “low-security” — which just means taking selfies.
The Selfie Check introduced by the Sada team during the event is designed to protect user privacy.
“Selfie is unique in its design,” said Daniel Schorr, one of TFH’s CEOs, during the presentation. “That means we maximize the local processing that happens on your device, on your phone, so your photos are yours.”
Selfie verification is clearly not new, and scammers have been around for a long time managed to deceive. “Obviously, we’re doing our best, and this is like one of the best systems you’ll ever see for that. But it has its limitations,” Sada told TechCrunch. He noted that developers who want to integrate World services can choose from three different levels of verification, depending on the level of security that is important to them.
