Can Sam Altman make proving you’re human seem cool—and essential?

His startup Tools for Humanity’s World ID proof-of-human technology just got some big partners. But it also faces daunting challenges.

[Images: Tools for Humanity]

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Last weekend, I stopped by a gadget kiosk at my local mall—but not to buy a phone case or get a cracked screen replaced. Instead, I was there to get my irises and face scanned by a device called the Orb so I could receive a credential known as a World ID. Its purpose: to provide verifiable proof I’m a human being.

Like everyone on the internet, I have grudgingly accepted the need to complete CAPTCHA tests, a truly irritating form of personhood verification that has been with us for almost 30 years. But until fairly recently, it hadn’t dawned on me that more conclusive evidence might be necessary. It did, however, occur to the founders of Tools for Humanity (TFH), the outfit behind the World ID. They—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alex Blania, and Max Novendstern—founded it back in 2019, which is eons ago in AI years.

Now it’s become easier to understand why “proof of human,” as TFH calls it, might be a pressing issue. Deepfaked imposters have become so convincing that they’ve already been used in impersonation scams that have netted millions of dollars for cybercriminals. Moreover, the rise of agentic AI has us hurtling toward an era when agents will jostle for resources across the internet—not always for sinister purposes, but certainly in ways that will complicate life for those of us made of flesh and blood. By next year, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently predicted, the bots online will outnumber the humans.

Consequently, a reliable means of validating one’s humanity—CAPTCHAs are notoriously easy to fool—could become essential infrastructure. “At the limit, every single app and website on the internet will have to use something like World ID to protect itself and its users,” says TFH chief product officer Tiago Sada.

Last week, Altman (TFH’s chairman) and Sada were among the presenters at an event the company held in San Francisco to unveil version 4.0 of the World ID platform. (CEO Blania, recovering from emergency hand surgery, Zoomed in.) The launch was dense with news, including partnerships with Zoom, DocuSign, and Tinder—three familiar brands that will build World ID-based verification into their apps—and a system for preventing bots from buying up concert tickets en masse. A selfie-based option will supplement the Orb’s face-and-iris scan for situations in which absolute certitude of humanity is less critical. And a new feature will assist users who want to delegate tasks to their personal agents, helping to distinguish the good bots from the bad.

TFH’s event amounted to a reboot of sorts. The company has issued 18 million World ID verifications to date, but has struggled to frame its service in a consistent, broadly appealing way. In its early days, it called itself “a technology company built to ensure a more just economic system,” a mission that led to it creating its own cryptocurrency. New World ID members still receive Worldcoin as a benefit—mine is currently worth $10.59—and the World app feels as much like a crypto wallet as an ID verification tool.

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