OpenAI’s eyeball-scanning Orb can tell if you’re human

Imagine a future where proving you're human becomes essential. Enter the World Orb—an eye-scanning device designed to verify your humanity without compromising your privacy.

In a future where humans must prove their humanity in a world full of AI fakes, the OpenAI Orb—now known as the World Orb—offers a solution. This space age-y spherical device scans people’s eyeballs and creates an encrypted digital pass—called a WorldID—that verifies a person’s humanness without capturing images or collecting information.

Our current coexistence with AI isn’t that dire—yet. But with the rise of deepfakes in cyberbullying, political ads, and financial scams, we’ve already seen the very real consequences of not being able to tell a real from a fake. A reliable way to prove humanity could be a useful tool.

But how will the Orb work? And what will we use it for? It’s a bit complex, but today I’m going to break down what we know so far about World’s new device.

World Orb’s origins

Unveiled in May 2023, the Worldcoin Orb was a custom biometric imaging device created by Tools for Humanity. The idea was to provide global access to OpenAI’s digital currency, Worldcoin, through the World ID protocol.

Now, as a second iteration, the new World Orb has 30 fewer parts than its predecessor. This makes the device easier and cheaper to produce and, thus, simpler to distribute worldwide.

Engineering for scale

So what’s under the hood of the new OpenAI Orb? According to World, it’s powered by the latest NVIDIA Jetson Chipset—and it has almost 5x the AI performance over the earlier Orb version. It allows faster and more seamless proof of human verifications.

There are also enhanced visible light and infrared cameras, which allow the device to work in a range of environments and lighting. It also has 5G connectivity and a fully removable external SD card.

How does the Orb work?

In a nutshell, those fancy cameras snap photos of your face and eyes, which get encrypted and stored on your phone. Only you can control them.

The photos then generate permanently encrypted codes, which are stored in secure databases, preventing double verifications.

It’s an easy process, one completed in just a few seconds, apparently. People can delete their data at any time.

What is World ID?

World ID refers to the information gathered by the Orb: images, metadata, and derived data (including the iris fragment).

The World ID lets you anonymously and securely verify that you are a human for online purposes. So, it would make a great, safe tool for things like signing into social apps or voting online.

Meanwhile, the Face Auth feature gives you an extra layer of security. Inspired by the face authentication tech millions of us already use, it ensures your World ID can only be used by you—the person who created it.

Privacy and Orb

Personally, I’m not keen on relying on an OpenAI Orb to capture my biometric information. But World says that the Orb is eminently secure and private. It checks that you’re uniquely human and haven’t signed up before.

It does this by looking at the fragment generated from your iris. No two people have the same iris pattern, so your set of encrypted numbers based on your iris pattern (the iris fragment) is yours alone.

And since the fragment is just a string of numbers, it reveals nothing about you. Not even your name, just that you’re human.

What the future holds for Orb

World says that it has verified nearly 7 million humans so far. Meanwhile, governments worldwide–including Kenya and France—are investigating the company’s operations due to privacy concerns.

The investigations haven’t slowed the company down. According to World’s Chief Design Officer Rich Heley, “We need more Orbs—lots more Orbs, probably on the order of 1,000 times more orbs than we have today.”

World is also starting “Orb on Demand,” which is exactly what it sounds like. That’s right, you might be able to order an eye scan the way you order a pizza.

Parting thoughts

I’d be thrilled to have a unique and anonymous way to verify my identity online. Although we are, most likely, still experiencing AI in its infancy, it’s already impossible to tell an AI-generated image from a real one. So, the time is ripe for a technology like the World ID.

However, I have serious doubts about whether or not a private company can remain secure and handle highly personal biometric data. Since the issue of identifying humanity isn’t a pressing concern at the moment, let’s see where this one takes us!

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