Computers and information technology Cryptocurrency project Worldcoin changes its name to World

OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman's cryptocurrency and identification project Worldcoin has ambitious growth targets and is changing its name. The new name is simply World, as the start-up behind it announced.

At the announcement on Thursday, Altman emphasized that the new era of artificial intelligence (AI) makes it particularly important to be able to determine that someone is actually a human being. The current infrastructure is not suitable for this. World also wants to cooperate with governments, said co-founder Alex Blania from Germany.

Altman's company OpenAI had triggered a global push for AI with the release of the chatbot ChatGPT. World, on the other hand, developed a system called "World ID", in which people scan their eyes for unique identification. The scanners are spherical devices to which World gave the name "Orb".

The company presented a new, more powerful model and emphasized that it would need 1000 times more devices for its growth plans. So far, there are locations where you can be scanned, but in future it will also be possible to have an Orb delivered to your home in Latin America and elsewhere.

World wants to tackle the deepfake problem

World also wants to tackle the problem of so-called deepfake videos, in which artificial intelligence software is used to create deceptively real-looking fake recordings of real people. One of the biggest current concerns is that fraudsters are trying to trick employees into transferring money by staging a video call with the alleged boss.

World's solution, called "Deep Face", is to match the videos with the images that are taken when the eyes are scanned. The company wants to offer its own camera interface on users' devices so that cooperation between tech platforms will not be necessary. However, the recognition only works for people who have registered with World.

In several countries, there were data protection concerns about Worldcoin's original technical solutions. The company emphasizes that no data is stored on the orbs themselves, but that they go directly to users' devices.