"In the AI era, proving you are a real person is becoming increasingly important. The iris-based World ID will overcome the limits of existing captchas and know-your-customer-based proof of personhood and will establish itself as a leading authentication technology in the AI era."

Tools For Humanity (TFH), which develops the iris-based ID project World that Sam Altman helped co-found, held an interview with South Korean reporters on Oct. 1. Chief Business Officer Trevor Traina (트레버 트레이나) made clear that iris-based identity authentication is the most certain and effective alternative for proving someone is human in the AI era.

Tools For Humanity has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over several years to develop Orb, a camera equipped with Nvidia chips and AI. Orb registers iris patterns anonymously and issues a unique World ID to each person.

Those who complete iris authentication receive a World ID and are also given Worldcoin as a reward. Users can use their World ID and receive Worldcoin through the World app, which can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store and Google Play, among others.

The World app consists of 2 main services: a cryptocurrency wallet and a function to receive Worldcoin, and an identity service that lets users use the World ID they received through iris authentication. The ID can be used in services that support World ID regardless of Worldcoin. It is similar to logging into various services with a Google or Facebook ID.

Traina said, "Recent reports show that more than half of web activity is created by bots, not people. X comments and product reviews are no exception, and neither are finance and banking where security is needed. As bots become able to replicate driver’s licences, captchas and customer verification procedures used by companies, financial institutions and governments no longer work. This is the moment we really need World ID."

Tools For Humanity is building the World ID ecosystem mainly with companies that provide services to enterprises and users. In the first half of the year, it partnered with the collaboration platform Zoom, DocuSign, the dating app Tinder and the e-commerce platform Shopify. It also joined hands with Okta, which specialises in ID security. Traina said the partnership with Zoom also includes technology to respond to deepfakes during video conferences, and that the technology is being tested at several U.S. financial companies.

On the enterprise side, it is promoting "true three-factor authentication" as a point of differentiation. Traina stressed that two-factor authentication uses a valid document such as a driver’s licence, while three-factor authentication confirms whether the person holding the document is actually the account owner.

He added, "Companies are reluctant to store personally identifiable information because they must bear financial responsibility if data is leaked through hacking. In this situation, the need for identity verification is growing more than ever. The anonymous credential provided by World ID solves all of these problems. World ID eases the burden that comes with storing personal information."

As bot-driven traffic surges, detecting whether traffic is generated by people or bots has already emerged as a battleground in the tech sector. Investment is also rising in technologies that use AI to detect bots.

ㆍ[Tech Inside] Bots vs bot detection technology... a world of entangled battles in the AI era

One approach is to analyse user behaviour while using a website and score factors such as how fast and naturally the cursor moves, scrolling and input patterns, whether the IP address has a history of suspicious activity, and what device is being used, to determine whether the user is a person or a bot.

Traina said behaviour-pattern analysis is not strong enough at scale. He said bots are getting smarter by drawing parabolas rather than straight lines. He added that using other tools requires constantly staying ahead of bots, which is very burdensome.

According to Traina, the World app has been downloaded close to 40 million times, and 18 million of those users have completed iris verification through Orb. World ID has been used close to 500 million times. Traina said that at first the company was busy explaining its technology to potential partners, but now partners approach it first saying they need a solution. He said the ecosystem will expand further if partners offer World ID as an option and the number of users increases.

Tools For Humanity is currently focusing on targeting major countries to expand the World ecosystem. Because producing Orb involves substantial costs, it is focusing for now on markets such as the United States, South Korea, Japan and Germany. Traina said cooperation with Tinder started in Japan and is expanding to the United States. He said cooperation with DocuSign and Zoom was possible only after adoption in the United States reached a certain level.