World ID expands to Tinder and Zoom as platforms fight AI-powered bots and deepfakes

Gazing Into Sam Altman's Orb Now Proves You're Human on Tinder

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 the startup'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 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 ten times for 30 minutes. The video conferencing 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. 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.

Tinder and Zoom offer 'proof of humanity' eye-scans to combat AI

Tinder will let users prove they are human and not robots by bringing advanced eye-scanning technology to the app amid rising fears over AI. Users of the dating app, as well as other major platforms such as video calling service Zoom, will be able to scan their irises to earn a "proof of humanity" badge attached to their profile or name. Through either an online app or an orb-shaped scanning device run by the World network people can submit to a scan of their iris, the coloured portion of the eye, in order to confirm they are human. World, formerly known as Worldcoin, is part of Tools for Humanity, a start-up co-founded and chaired by Sam Altman who is also the head of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. Once a person is confirmed as human by the technology they receive a unique identification code which is stored on their smartphone and considered their World ID. Tinder and Zoom have encountered more problems with fake or malicious accounts and users over the last two years as improving AI technology has made it easier to impersonate human speech, voice and likeness. Fake profiles on Tinder, often referred to as "bots", are typically used to scam people out of money or their personal information. One user, Victoria Brooks, wrote last year on a personal blog she found Tinder overrun with bots looking to scam people. Brooks estimated 30% of Tinder profiles she'd encountered were "AI-enhanced, emotionally manipulative, algorithmically-optimized romance scammers". Such bot accounts use not only fake profile photos, but AI-generated scripts to chat with real users. Romance scams saw people in the US lose more than $1bn last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Late last year, Tinder began requiring all users to submit a video selfie in order to confirm they were real people. The integration with World ID will be an additional way people can be verified on the app if they choose to do so. Yoel Roth, who leads trust and safety at Match Group, the owner of Tinder, said "Partnering with World ID is a natural next step" for the platform to help users "know the person on the other end is real." Zoom, which is widely used for video conferences in work settings, is more concerned with increasingly sophisticated deepfakes of people who may be known to a user. In 2024, a worker in Hong Kong was convinced by video deepfakes of his company's chief financial officer and several other co-workers to hand over $25m. Research from Deloitte said financial fraud conducted through such deepfake scams could reach $40bn by 2027 in the US alone. Someone with a World ID can now has the option to use it on Zoom in order to show they are who they appear to be. World is the third time the name of the company behind the authentication technology has changed. When it first launched to the public in 2022 it was called Worldcoin, and launched a cryptocurrency under the same name. In 2024, it became World Network, then last year it was shortened to World. World uses the iris for ID confirmation because it is the most unique part of a person, even more so than a fingerprint. World also describes the verification technique as anonymous, saying no personal information, like a name or address, is required. The company said 40 million people have signed up for the World app so far. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.