Sam Altman's World project uses iris scans to verify humans online as concerns persist over biometrics and privacy

Sam Altman's World project is recruiting people to have their irises scanned to create unique digital identities intended to distinguish real humans from increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligences online.

World and its affiliated technology company, Tools for Humanity, say the system has already made 15 million "Verified Human" enrollments and aims to reach 100 million in the next year. The process uses a spherical scanning device known as an Orb that, according to the company, captures a high-definition image of the iris in about five seconds, checks for liveness through heat and motion sensors, and converts the biometric pattern into a long binary code that serves as a unique identifier.

A Tools for Humanity spokesperson described the conversion as creating a "zero-knowledge proof" that, in the company's account, does not reveal a person's identity or personal attributes but merely confirms uniqueness and liveness. The company says the original iris image is quickly discarded and replaced by the generated binary code, which is stored in a "privacy pack" on the user's phone.

World ties verification to an economic incentive: people who consent to an iris scan receive Worldcoin tokens. In the United States the company says new participants receive the equivalent of $42 worth of Worldcoin, disbursed over 12 months. World has also signaled partnerships and use cases for the verification system, saying it is already working with gaming company Razer and has arrangements with Tinder; the organization said it is in talks with Reddit to apply human verification to reduce bot activity.

Tools for Humanity and some backers frame the project as both a technical solution to bot-driven fraud and a mechanism to enable fairer distribution of wealth as artificial intelligence automates work. A 2023 World white paper cited the need to consider universal basic income as AI displaces labor and presented human verification as a way to prevent fraud in distribution systems. The project's backers include private investors and cryptocurrency interests; one investor group, BitMine, is reported to have committed $20 million into Eightco, the Worldcoin treasury.

The project traces its origins, the company says, to a 2019 concern from Sam Altman and partner Alex Blania that the internet would become harder to trust as automated systems became more humanlike. As generative AI accelerated in public awareness after 2022, World renewed focus on providing a cryptographic method to certify that online accounts and interactions are controlled by living humans.

Privacy advocates and some technologists have questioned whether handing biometric data to a private entity is advisable, even if the company says it does not retain raw images. Ben Winters, director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, said the program is another step toward reduced privacy. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin told reporters he was not ready to participate, citing low public trust in large technology companies and concern about centralizing sensitive biometric information.

"Trust in big tech is at an all-time low in the United States," Rivlin said. "Sam Altman is now big tech. And he is asking for something very private." Others working in tech and writing on the sector offered a range of views. Adam Fisher, author of Valley of Genius, characterized Altman's aims as driven by a techno-utopian impulse and said he did not believe profit was the only motive behind the project. Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine, described the privacy approach as a "lockbox solution" and said the system is the "safest privacy-driven solution out there."

Security experts note that biometric systems present different threat models than passwords or tokens: stolen biometric templates can be more difficult for individuals to change, and centralized or poorly secured systems can become targets. Tools for Humanity asserts that it generates and stores only the derived binary representation and that the system uses cryptographic proofs to prevent linkage to personal identity. The company has not provided independent, third-party verification of those claims in the materials cited by reporters.

World's token-linked verification has operational and economic implications. The company says it can help prevent automated accounts from gaming online services and can be used to verify recipients of funds in hypothetical or experimental universal basic income programs. World also has discussed charging small fees denominated in World tokens each time a human proof is verified, potentially creating a revenue mechanism tied to usage of the verification protocol.

The project has prompted debates about regulation and the role of private firms in identity infrastructure. Advocates of digital identity solutions argue that reliable proof-of-personhood protocols could reduce fraud, bolster trust in online marketplaces and voting mechanisms, and enable new economic systems in a world where AI mimics human behavior. Critics counter that wide adoption of biometric verification under private control raises privacy, surveillance and security risks and may create new forms of exclusion or dependency.

World's stated ambition to scale iris-based verification to hundreds of millions of people will test how regulators, privacy advocates, users and industry partners weigh the trade-offs between reducing AI-driven fraud and safeguarding sensitive biometric data. The company says its design minimizes retained data and uses cryptographic techniques to protect users, while critics emphasize the need for independent audits, clear legal safeguards and transparency about how derived biometric templates are used, stored and shared.

As the World initiative expands, policymakers and technology watchers will likely scrutinize whether the verification approach achieves its stated goals without creating new central points of risk for biometric information. The debate underscores a broader tension in the technology and AI fields: how to combine technical tools to restore trust online while protecting individual rights and preventing concentrated control of digital identity infrastructure.