Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America
- Reference: 1746362591
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/05/04/sam_altman_startup_world/
- Source link:
The US retail stores are the latest outgrowth of the World (formerly known as WorldCoin) project - the flagship initiative from Tools for Humanity, a startup co-founded in 2019 by OpenAI boss Sam Altman, along with Alex Blania and Max Novendstern.
World allows you to verify you are an actual person so that you can log into services that require the platform. It specializes in attempting to distinguish real humans from bots and AI-generated imitators. The idea being, if you're running a site or app – internet gaming or dating, say – and you really want to make sure each of your users are genuine individuals and not automated fakes, World provides that level of user identity and authenticity management.
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Here's the catch: The most reliable way to do this, the startup argues, is with biometric scanning.
[2]
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World's key components include the Orb (a glossy sphere that photos your iris and face), World ID (a blockchain-based so-called proof-of-personhood system), the World App (where users manage their ID and get access to services), and Worldcoin (aka WLD, A cryptocurrency distributed to users as a reward).
Unsurprisingly, regulators around the world have raised concerns about this whole idea of an upstart collecting and storing people's biometric data. South Korea [4]fined the startup over $800,000 for privacy violations. [5]Hong Kong ordered it to cease operations entirely, and [6]Germany , [7]Kenya , and [8]Spain have initiated various legal actions against the firm.
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But never mind all that - on to America! The upstart has now set up shopfronts in Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco, with its eyeball-scanning Orb devices. Since SF is also the home of Vulture West, we decided to pop in and have a look.
The store, nestled between Macy's and Louis Vuitton in the city's Union Square, is a tad ramshackle and barely painted. A wooden structure in the center of the room houses eight soccer ball-sized Orbs at varying heights.
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World's San Francisco outlet ... The Apple Store it ain't
Here's how it works for us netizens. We'll assume you need to create (or anticipate creating) a verified-human profile on World that's required by an app or service you want to use.
First, you must download the World App, sign in, and after entering the store, wait as it links with a nearby Orb. The app tells you where to stand in relation to the sphere and how to position your head, and the scan of your eyes and face takes a few seconds to complete. That data is used to build a blockchain-based [11]World ID unique to you based on your physically biometric info.
Specifically, that biometric scan is encrypted and sent directly to your phone to be converted into that unique identity token, after which the info is deleted on the Orb itself, the project says. As an incentive, the World app is credited with Worldcoins worth a little over $16 in real-world money. That token is then used later on when logging into things to prove you are a unique, genuinely real human.
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Despite all the scrutiny, the startup claims to have 26 million people using its app around the world, with 12 million people having added their biometric data.
[13]ChatGPT burns tens of millions of Softbank dollars listening to you thanking it
[14]OpenAI asks Uncle Sam to let it scrape everything, stop other countries complaining
[15]Sam Altman wants a US-led freedom coalition to fight authoritarian AI
[16]Sam Altman's basic income experiment finds that money can indeed buy happiness
At a Wednesday event in SF, Altman and Blania officially launched the organization in the US – there have been trials around the world – and said the outfit wanted to have 7,500 Orbs - four times the total current installed base - in place across the States by the end of the year. The biz has set up a factory in Texas to pump out Orbs for America and the rest of the world, and is working on a miniaturized version to increase verification.
“I’m a very proud American, I think America should lead innovation, not fight it off,” Altman said at the shindig, which you can watch below.
[17]Youtube Video
At the gathering, Blania said the three areas the business will be focusing on are gaming, online dating, and social media, mainly to eliminate bots masquerading as real people. World IDs can help assure people they are chatting to actual people online, he claimed. That said, it's not a panacea; we can think of some drawbacks.
World announced two partnerships during its US launch. A Visa-backed debit card will be issued later this year, and Match.com in Japan will be using World ID to reassure nervous daters.
During our store visit, an assistant said the amount of traffic for the Orbs had been very high, but we observed only a handful of people giving it a try in the 15 minutes in the shop. One man, a visitor to the [18]RSA Conference happening just down the road, said he'd heard about it at the show and "free money is free money." We hope he's right. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aBePHLVhSZ2ySD3sB9NLqwAAA0U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aBePHLVhSZ2ySD3sB9NLqwAAA0U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aBePHLVhSZ2ySD3sB9NLqwAAA0U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://cointelegraph.com/news/south-korea-fines-worldcoin-personal-data-violations
[5] https://www.reuters.com/technology/hong-kong-regulator-directs-worldcoin-cease-operations-citing-privacy-concerns-2024-05-22/
[6] https://www.theblock.co/post/331713/german-authority-orders-eyeball-scanning-world-project-to-delete-data-after-investigation
[7] https://icj-kenya.org/news/high-court-to-deliver-judgment-on-worldcoin-case-in-may-2025/
[8] https://cointelegraph.com/news/worldcoin-spain-activity-suspension
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aBePHLVhSZ2ySD3sB9NLqwAAA0U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/05/02/orb.jpg
[11] https://docs.world.org/world-id
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aBePHLVhSZ2ySD3sB9NLqwAAA0U&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/21/users_being_polite_to_chatgpt/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/13/openai_data_copyright/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/25/sam_altman_ai_freedom/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/sam_altman_basic_income/
[17] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x8tACHbyjg
[18] https://www.theregister.com/special_features/spotlight_on_rsac/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
A large database based on iris scans - what could possibly go wrong?
There is probably a "use" for it in the US dystopian future... just not a good one.
The best use I can think of right now is that it's an effective cue to swipe left on anyone willing to sell their eyeball out for 16 dollars.
"I think America should lead..."
Absolutely correct. The US should lead, the rest of the world should watch and [1]vote accordingly .
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/30/australia/peter-dutton-policies-australia-election-intl-hnk
Re: "I think America should lead..."
America is the ultimate "tech bro."
It made a good decision once 1 and got lucky 2 .
For decades we've been coasting on that good luck and, like tech bros, managed to convince a good part of the rest of the world that we were geniuses.
We weren't -- and aren't -- we were just lucky, as can be shown in our record of failure after failure in meddling with other people's lives and countries around Asia and South and Central America, where our intervention not only hasn't improved things, it has often made them objectively worse. There just aren't many shining examples of success in our CV, no matter how hard we polish them.
Finally, the rest of the world is catching on to the fact we're not especially clever. In fact, we can pretty stupid, as recent evidence clearly shows.
Our luck has finally run out and going to cause a great deal of pain, misery, and, more than likely, death, both here in the States and elsewhere as everyone learns that lesson.
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1 Getting into World War II and defeating the Axis -- and even then we had to be dragged in by Japan.
2 In World War II, while a large part of the rest of the industrialized world got walloped, we stayed economically high and dry, benefiting from the boost to our industrial base and shaking us out of a decade long economic depression.
This "could" be safe.
"Specifically, that biometric scan is encrypted and sent directly to your phone to be converted into that unique identity token, after which the info is deleted on the Orb itself, the project says. "
This could very well be secure, but only [1]if they resist feature creep .
I also see scams coming where some poor people around the world lend their eyeballs and identities to online the bots for a pittance of money.
[1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2023/08/21/some-rough-impressions-of-worldcoin/
Proof-of-personhood
Are they also going to produce another station where you report for destruction if rejected, or is that capability already built in?
I know I should get with the times, but it seems a tad dystopian for the protection of relatively inconsequential services such as "gaming, online dating, and social media", but I guess it's really for revenue protection rather than identify verification per se and they're certainly activities whose participants can be monetized effectively. I've no doubt, however, that people will be queuing around the block for their "exclusive access". I hope, though, that the unrecognized will be permitted to post a final selfie of their "whatevvuh" face to their profiles just before they're turned to dust by high-intensity lasers and that their entire previous unverified existence is not simply erased.