The digital identity verification project called World, co-founded by Sam Altman, is accelerating its ambition to expand globally, with a notable starting point being integration into the dating app Tinder.
At an event held in San Francisco, the company behind World, Tools for Humanity, announced plans to bring real-life verification technology into many fields, from dating apps, event ticket sales, email to business operations.
According to Mr. Sam Altman, as artificial intelligence increasingly develops, the boundary between humans and AI becomes blurred, making the need for identity verification more urgent than ever.
Unlike many traditional identification solutions, World focuses on confirming whether a person is real or not but still protects privacy.
This technology is based on a cryptographic mechanism called "non-disclosure evidence", which allows identity verification without publicizing personal data.
The center of the ecosystem is the Orb device. This is a spherical biometric scanner, used to scan the iris and create a unique identification code called World ID.
Users can use this ID for verification on digital services, although they can still access applications without verification at the highest level.
In its expansion strategy, Tinder became an important partner. After testing in Japan, the platform decided to deploy World ID verification on a global scale, including the US market.
Authenticated users will have their own icons attached to their profiles, helping to increase credibility and reduce the risk of fake accounts.
Not stopping at dating, World also aims for the entertainment industry with the Concert Kit feature. This tool allows artists to allocate a portion of tickets to people who have been verified, in order to limit ticket speculation by bots.
The solution is designed to be compatible with major ticket sales platforms such as Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and has the participation of famous artists.
In the business segment, World also expanded cooperation with Zoom to combat deepfake in online meetings and with DocuSign to verify electronic signatures.
In addition, the company is researching a "author authorization" model, allowing users to authorize AI to operate on their behalf while still ensuring verified identity, through cooperation with Okta Company (specializing in identity and access management in the US).
Despite the great ambition, World's expansion still faces challenges, especially in verification. Previously, users had to go directly to the Orb device location to scan biometrics, but it was quite inconvenient.
To solve this, the company is expanding the location of the device and testing many levels of verification, from Orb scanning, document authentication via NFC to selfie testing.
According to the company representative, each level will have a different level of security, allowing partners to flexibly choose.
However, simple methods like selfies still have the risk of being counterfeited, showing that the balance between convenience and safety has not yet had a perfect solution.
The expansion of World reflects a new trend when proving "who you are" can become an important factor in the AI era.
