Sam Altman-Backed Worldcoin Introduces Competitor to Apple’s Face ID

Worldcoin, the biometric cryptocurrency project backed by OpenAI‘s Sam Altman, is launching a new privacy feature called Face Auth, a program that it says can help stop fraud online.

Formally launched last July, Worldcoin is a blockchain-based eyeball-scanning “proof of personhood” initiative, combined with a financial network, that asks users to scan their irises using a proprietary biometric device it calls The Orb.

In exchange, the user is given a “digital ID” as well as a cryptocurrency token and a way to make payments using that token. Part of the idea behind the project, as previously outlined by Altman, is that advancements in AI are making it increasingly difficult to tell whether a piece of digital content was made by humans rather than a bot or algorithm.

The new Face Auth feature is a facial comparison program that can only be activated by the person who has already verified their digital identification, or “World ID.” This is meant to provide additional security for online purchases, financial transactions and sign-in applications.

Damien Kieran, the chief privacy officer for Tools for Humanity, the developer of Worldcoin, told Newsweek that Face Auth creates an additional layer of security that Apple‘s Face ID, and other similar technology currently on the market, does not offer.

“It’s a unique match between the person seeking to use the World ID and the person who made the World ID,” Kieran said. “It’s way more secure than anything we can do with Face ID.”

To use Face Auth, a Worldcoin user would take a selfie on their phone, which would match the face to a scan taken by The Orb. The device is able to implement more fraud measures than any phone is capable of, the company claims.

“We want to ensure a match between the World ID and the face that’s actually using or opening the World ID,” Kieran said. “We want to make that link as close as possible.”

“Every time that you go to your iPhone, your iPhone is sort of taking a new photo of you and it’s comparing it to an on-device biometric. It’s comparing a one-to-one match,” Kieran said. “What we’re doing is we’re comparing it one-to-billions. It’s your photo on your device and it’s always that unique check with that photo.”

Kieran, who has an identical twin, explained how Face ID on the iPhone can’t tell the differences between he and his brother, allowing his twin to unlock his device without authorization. Face Auth, however, prompts a person to tilt their head, “checking various angles of your face to compare them against the photo” in the system and is thus much more accurate.

“Doing this means that identical twins cannot fool it,” Kieran said.

This work builds on the Tool for Humanity principles of security, anonymity, transparency and personal control, he said. Kieran said Face Auth is part of a broader vision of how consumer technology can be used in an online world increasingly flooded with AI content and driven by bots.

Kieran, who was a vice president and deputy general counsel at Twitter, pointed to that company’s years-long battle to eliminate bots on its platform, which have only increased since Elon Musk took control of the service and renamed it X.

“The problem with that is it’s very, very difficult for a company at that scale to understand whether a thing interacting with its service is a computer or a person,” Kieran said. “The solution to that is typically collect more data…The bots become stronger and more powerful and the more information you share about yourself, actually the more at risk you become.”

In a world of catfishing, scamming, deepfakes and identity theft, Worldcoin is hoping to provide privacy, choice and control back to the users, Kieran said. As AI advances, its ability to mimic human-like behaviors has the potential to disrupt online interactions.

“A lot of how people build trust is through interactions,” said Adrian Ludwig, chief information security officer for Tools for Humanity. “All of this is how we establish identity and become comfortable with someone.”

Ludwig said the problem with AI is its ability to create behavior and content based on replicating human behavior. A 2022 report by the European Union‘s law enforcement agency suggested that as much as 90% of internet content could be synthetically generated by 2026.

“What we’re building solves those issues and some issues that we don’t even fully understand that are going to happen in the coming years,” Kieran told Newsweek. “The product is effectively privacy.”

Face Auth has been piloted in select locations where Worldcoin is operating, such as Argentina. Kieran said the early results are “really impressive” in terms of accuracy.

The project is still developing how often a person’s unique ID needs to be updated by The Orb, as people age and their appearances change.

Worldcoin is one of several crypto biometrics firms working on creating a blockchain-based digital ID is a way for people to verify their identity across products and applications while also, in theory, maintaining their privacy. Tools for Humanity says a person only needs to scan their irises once using its Orb, and the biometric data is turned into a unique code and then permanently deleted, making it impossible to create a false identity.

The company has been scanning irises in dozens of cities, including New York and San Francisco, across 20 countries.

Worldcoin has been subject to controversy and intense regulatory scrutiny since its launch, including a withering critique in the MIT Technology Review that claimed the initiative was using “deceptive marketing techniques” to “build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor.”

The article criticizes Worldcoin for allegedly sending representatives to villages in Indonesia, offering everything from cash to Airpods as incentives to recruit people to have their irises scanned. Worldcoin issued a response to the piece, saying the project no interest in harvesting personal data: “Worldcoin is only interested in a user’s uniqueness—i.e., that they have not signed up for Worldcoin before—not their identity.”

Government officials have expressed concern over Worldcoin’s data storage and collection practices, with Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain and Kenya opening investigations or ordering Worldcoin to cease operations entirely.