Worldcoin to allow companies, governments to use its ID tech

Co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Worldcoin launched last week, requiring users to give their iris scans in exchange for a digital ID and, in some countries, free crypto currency as part of plans to create a “identity and financial network”

Worldcoin will grow its operations to sign up more users globally and aims to permit other organisations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology, a senior manager for the firm behind the project told Reuters.

Co-founded by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, Worldcoin launched last week, requiring users to give their iris scans in exchange for a digital ID and, in some countries, free crypto currency as part of plans to create a “identity and financial network”.

In sign-up sites across the globe, people have been getting their faces scanned by a shiny spherical “orb”, ignoring privacy campaigners’ concerns that the biometric data could be misused. Worldcoin says 2.2mln have signed up, mostly during a trial period over the last two years. Data watchdogs in Britain, France and Germany have stated they are looking into the project.

We are on this mission of building the largest financial and identity community that we can, stated Ricardo Macieira, GM for Europe at Tools For Humanity, the San Francisco and Berlin-based firm behind the project.

Macieira added Worldcoin would continue rolling out operations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and “all the parts of the world that will accept us.”

The website of Worldcoin cites a number of possible applications, including differentiating humans from AI, enabling “global democratic processes” and showing a “potential path” to universal basic income, although these results are not guaranteed.

Most people interviewed by Reuters at sign-up sites in Britain, India and Japan last week stated they were joining in order to receive the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the firm says verified users can claim.

I do not think we are going to be the ones producing universal basic income. If we can do the infrastructure that permits for governments or other entities to do so we would be very happy, Macieira added.

The idea is that as we build this infrastructure and that we permit other third parties to use the technology, he said.

In future, the tech behind the iris-scanning orb will be open-source, he said.

The idea is that anyone can in the future build their own orb and use it to help the community that it is aiming for, Macieira added.

Regulators and privacy campaigners have raised concerns about Worldcoin’s data collection, including whether users are giving informed consent and whether one firm should be responsible for handling the data.

The website of Worldcoin says the project is “completely private” and that the biometric data is either deleted or users can choose to have it stored in encrypted form.

The Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision, which has jurisdiction in the EU, stated it begun probing Worldcoin in November 2022 due to concerns about its large-scale processing of sensitive data.

Michael Will, president of the Bavarian regulator, said it would look into whether Worldcoin’s system is “safe and stable”.

The project requires very, very ambitious security measures and lots of explanations and transparency to make sure that data protection requirements are not neglected, he added.

He added people who hand over their data need “absolute clarity” about how and why it is processed.