Sam Altman’s Eye-Scanning Orbs Can Now be Summoned ‘Like a Pizza’, Say Worldcoin Execs

Sam
Altman’s
Worldcoin
project
is
chopping
its
name
in
half
and
debuting
a
faster,
simpler
“Orb”
to
scan
the
irises
of
billions
of
people.

Now
known
simply
as
“World,”
the
project’s
long-term
goal
remains
the
creation
of
an
identity-verification
system
that
lets
people
“prove
their
humanity”
anonymously
online.
To
get
there
it
has
already
debuted
a
fleet
of
wonky
Orbs
that
scan
eyeballs
of
people
who
get
WLD
crypto
tokens
and
a
world
ID
in
return.

At
a

media
event,
anchored
by
AI-darling
Altman
and
his
co-founder
Alex
Blania,
World
employees
unveiled
plans
for
“Orb
2.0.”
It
will
be
faster
to
build
with
fewer
parts,
faster
to
run
with
better
chips,
and
run
on
open
source
code.

“We
need
more
orbs,
lots
more
orbs,
probably
on
the
order
of
1,000
more
orbs
than
we
have
today,”
said
chief
designer
Rich
Heley.
“Not
only
more
orbs,
but
more
orbs
in
more
places.”

World
is
opening
“premium
verification
experiences”
–
essentially
storefronts
full
of
orbs
–
in
Buenos
Aires
and
Mexico
City.
It’s
also
going
to
stage
orbs
in
more
day-to-day
places,
like
a
local
coffee
shop.
People
will
also
be
able
to
summon
orbs
to
their
home
through
an
app,
“much
like
a
pizza,”
Heley
said.

While
the
orbs
anchor
World’s
humanity
checkpoint,
the
project
also
plans
to
accelerate
adoption
of
its
world
ID
system
by
letting
people
onboard
simply
by
submitting
government
IDs.

“Of
course,
they
won’t
have
used
an
orb
so
we
won’t
really
know
they’re
human,
we
just
know
they’re
a
thing
that
has
a
passport,”
said
Chief
Information
Security
Officer
Adiran
Ludwig.
He
later
added
this
onboarding
route
has
added
checks
to
stop
deepfakes.

A
new
product
called
World
ID
Deep
Faces
will
let
internet
users
confirm
that
the
people
they
think
they’re
talking
to
online
aren’t
deep
fakes
–
presuming
of
course
they
have
a
World
ID.

The
token
WLD,
fell
about
5%
after
the
presentation.