Altman’s Eye Scanning Identity Tech Startup Expands to the UK

Tools for Humanity, the startup co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is bringing its eye-scanning hardware to the UK. The biometric identity verification devices will first launch in London, with further expansions in Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, and Manchester in the coming months.

The company’s mission for this project is to establish a global digital identity system called World ID. It’s designed to verify whether a person is a real human in an era of ultra-sophisticated AI systems that can create deepfakes and bots for fraudulent purposes.

“AI systems are getting better at mimicking people, and that creates serious security challenges,” said Alex Blania, co-founder and CEO of Tools for Humanity. “Our technology gives people a way to prove they’re real without handing over personal data.”

The company’s spherical eye-scanning device, called Orb, scans people’s faces and eyes to confirm their identity. Orb captures the unique patterns of a user’s iris and creates a digital credential called World ID. The World ID code can be used as an anonymous identifier to sign into various applications. It currently works with platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Minecraft.

Adrian Ludwig, the company’s chief architect and a core contributor to the World project, told CNBC that the eye-scanning technology is gaining traction among enterprises and governments amid growing concerns from AI-fueled fraud.

However, the technology has been met with mixed reactions and is under increased regulatory scrutiny in some countries over privacy concerns. Regulators in Germany and Argentina have launched investigations, while Spain and Hong Kong have banned it.

Despite the scrutiny, the technology counts 13 million users globally, including in Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, and Thailand. The company also announced a rollout into six US cities. The long-term plan is to partner with major retailers to deploy the self-serve Orbs.

Tools for Humanity has addressed the privacy concerns, assuring it doesn’t store personal or biometric data. Instead, it encrypts the data and deletes the original. The identity verification process is carried out securely on the user’s device – only the infrastructure for confirming someone’s uniqueness is managed by third parties.

For adopters of the eye-scanning technology, Tools for Humanity offers a cryptocurrency incentive in the form of Worldcoin tokens.