Sam Altman’s iris-scanning, humanity-verifying World project announced at an event in San Francisco on Friday that Tinder users around the globe can now put a digital badge on their profiles signaling to potential suitors that they’re a real human, provided they’ve already stared into one of World’s glossy white Orbs and allowed their eyes to be scanned. The announcement follows a pilot project for Tinder verification that World previously conducted in Japan.
The global Tinder expansion is one of the biggest tests yet for World, and the company’s bet that everyday consumers will be willing to sign up for biometric verification services to use internet applications. Founded in 2019 by Altman and Alex Blania, the World project was designed for a future where the internet is overrun with highly capable AI agents that make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to tell who is really human. As companies like OpenAI—where Altman is CEO—and Anthropic push AI agents into the mainstream, the problem World was built to solve feels increasingly urgent.
But World has struggled to achieve mainstream adoption, and it has encountered resistance from governments around the globe that have probed the company over suspected violations of data protection laws. The company says 18 million people have now been verified with an Orb, up from 12 million last year.
In addition to the Tinder global expansion, Tools for Humanity, the company behind World, announced a number of other consumer and enterprise partnerships on Friday at its Lift Off event in San Francisco. The startup says Tinder users who verify with their World ID will receive five free "boosts," typically a paid feature that increases the number of users who see a profile by up to 10 times for 30 minutes. The videoconferencing platform Zoom also says that users can now require other participants to verify their identity with World before joining a call. Docusign, the contract signing software, will allow users to require World’s identity verification technology.
Tiago Sada, Tools for Humanity’s chief product officer, tells WIRED the company sees major platform partnerships as key to helping World become a mainstream identity-verification technology. Sada said he’s especially interested in working with social media companies in the future, and was encouraged to see that Reddit has started testing World as a solution to help users distinguish bots from real people.
Got a Tip?Do you have information about World or Tools for Humanity and want to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at mzeff.88.World is also launching a tool called Concert Kit, which lets artists reserve concert tickets for verified humans, a pitch aimed squarely at the bot-driven scalping problem that critics say has plagued sites like TicketMaster. World will test the feature on the upcoming Bruno Mars World Tour featuring Anderson .Paak, who is scheduled to play a verified-humans-only show under his alias DJ Pee .Wee in San Francisco on Friday night.
No new hardware announcements or updates were made at Friday’s event. World first launched the iris-scanning Orb back in 2023, alongside a mobile app that contains “mini apps” for different verification and blockchain-related programs. After a person scans their eyeball with one of World’s Orbs, the startup creates a unique cryptographic key for each person—their World ID. This creates a private, decentralized way to verify people online, without requiring them to upload their government ID all over the internet.
The project was initially called Worldcoin, and in the early days the startup offered people free cryptocurrency to scan their irises. World still offers a cryptocurrency token and a wallet for digital currencies, but dropped the “coin” from its name in 2024 and has since shifted its focus to identity verification for the AI era. Jess Montejano, a spokesperson for Tools for Humanity, says the company still offers crypto as an incentive when new users sign up, but has also expanded its offerings to include Netflix and Apple TV subscription trials.
While World is trying to solve the online bot problem, it doesn’t want to block AI agents from using the internet altogether. Earlier this year, the startup rolled out tools that link AI agents to a human’s digital identity, which are designed to allow a limited number of bots to operate on a human’s behalf online. Tools for Humanity says it’s working with Shopify and Vercel to help ensure “human-backed agents” can use these services.
While it has inked a number of corporate partnerships, Tools For Humanity has struggled to get governments around the world on board with its technology. Shortly after launching in 2023, the governments of Kenya, Spain, Portugal and other countries temporarily banned World’s operations to investigate the startup over privacy concerns. While some of these countries have lifted their restrictions and allowed World to resume operation, Brazil and other countries have long-term bans in place preventing the startup from expanding its technology there.
World has emphasized at previous press events that some of these restrictions were temporary pauses and not outright bans. Sada believes the issues World has run into with regulators largely stem from a misunderstanding about how the startup’s technology works.
“The idea that World ID is not just private, but it's one of the most private things you've ever used, that's not obvious,” says Sada. “We're just not used to this kind of technology. Many people used to tape their [iPhone’s sensor used to enable] Face ID when it came out, then we got used to it.”
A lingering question for Tools for Humanity is how the startup could one day work with Altman’s other company, OpenAI, as it ventures into AI-powered hardware products. Sada says he was unaware of what’s happening with OpenAI’s hardware efforts, and reiterated that while Altman is involved in World, that OpenAI and Tools for Humanity are two distinct companies.
Lauren Goode contributed reporting.
