It’s been said that by this time next year, 90% of what you see online could be generated by artificial intelligence.
That claim − often cited by Europol and Gartner − isn’t just a prediction. It’s a warning. If it holds true, we’ll soon have no clue what to trust online, let alone whom. Product reviews? Maybe fake. Instagram crush? Possibly a bot. News reports? Let’s hope this one’s still human.
But what if a wildly ambitious new piece of tech could prove − instantly − that the person you’re talking to is real? Like, born-with-a-belly-button real?
America, meet the Orb: a bold new attempt to verify you’re not a bot − just by looking you in the eye.
This week in San Francisco, Tools for Humanity (TFH), a start-up co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman − launched the U.S. rollout of World ID, a sci-fi-looking little globe that can verify actual humans. The rollout is starting in six cities: San Francisco, LA, Miami, Atlanta, Austin and Nashville.
But this isn’t just some start-up stunt. Tucked inside that shiny, white, crystal-ball-looking sphere isn’t magic. It’s math − the kind that powers secure online transactions and could someday help restore trust to the internet.
“Right now, the only ways we have to prove someone’s human are either invasive or super-annoying,” TFH Chief Architect Adrian Ludwig told me when I met with him at the company headquarters in San Francisco. “Like CAPTCHAs − or handing over private data like your phone number or ID.”
The Orb tech is basically the best patch we’ve seen yet for a massive design flaw that dates back to the birth of the internet.
“We focused on the tech − and made people an afterthought,” Ludwig said. Now, TFH says it wants to fix that before the bots take over.
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What exactly does the Orb do?
The pitch is simple: look into the Orb. It takes a quick image of your face, and most notably, your iris − more unique than a fingerprint − to check that you’re a unique, living, breathing human who hasn’t registered before (so you can’t create more than one “self”).
If it deems you real, it gives you a blue checkmark in the World App and creates your World ID. The image? Instantly deleted. Your World ID lives only on your smartphone.
What’s left is like a digital barcode for your eyeball that’s encrypted, split into pieces and scattered across a decentralized network, kind of like a glitter bomb. Ludwig said nothing’s stored on the Orb, sent to the company, or left to exploit, sell or leak.
“The code can confirm you’re human,” Ludwig explained. “But it can’t re-create your face or eyeball − just like a barcode on a cookie box tells you what’s inside, but doesn’t give you the cookie.”
Your World ID can’t even identify you − it confirms only that a human (not a bot) is behind the screen.
Can your World ID get hacked? Is it safe?
That’s the big question. I came in just as skeptical as the Reddit threads full of “hard pass” reactions.But if hackers come for World ID, Ludwig says, they’ll find nothing useful. The scrambled bits of iris data are anonymous and useless on their own. It’s like trying to solve a 1,000-piece puzzle with only seven random pieces.
Still, we’ve heard promises like this before − from Meta, Google and so many others. Anyone who remembers the fallout from Cambridge Analytica is right to be wary.
Harvard cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier flat-out dismissed it: “This is more blockchain stupidity. Just run away,” he told me via email.
Privacy concerns have trailed the Orb since it launched overseas in 2023. Authorities in Hong Kong banned it. South Korea fined TFH − though the company says the case has since been resolved. And critics are still wary of its original incentive model, which offered cryptocurrency (Worldcoin tokens) to those who signed up.
TFH says it has learned from the backlash, made major changes, and waited to launch in the United States until it was sure they “got it right.”
What problem does World ID solve?
In theory, a verified World ID helps crack down on deepfake-driven scams, bot-run social media accounts and marketplace rip-offs that vanish after payment hits “send,” and that’s just the beginning of the real-world problems it can solve.
Imagine using a platform where every user is a verified human. That could be game-changing for everything from dating apps to political forums to online education.
But here’s the catch: It works only if people actually use it.
Until the masses adopt it, fraudsters can simply avoid platforms that require World ID and continue doing business as usual.
So far a handful of notable companies are on board, including gaming giant Razer. The company also just announced partnerships with Visa and the Match Group (think Tinder and Hinge). TFH says more are coming, but it’s not quite a stampede yet.
And let’s be real: Getting millions of people to scan their irises in public isn’t going to be easy. Even with privacy safeguards in place, asking someone to stare into a glowing orb to prove they’re human still feels … weird.
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The Orb promises trust without surveillance. Privacy without passwords. And, eventually, the ability to know not just that someone is real, but also that they’re the person they claim to be. TFH says it’s working on that too.
So, will I sign up? Yes. I already did. Not because it’s perfect. Not because it’s risk-free. But because we have to start somewhere.
In a world where AI is already writing emails, creating fake girlfriends, shaping elections and spreading deadly misinformation, it feels as if it’s time to put a few safeguards in place.
We built the internet without a way to prove we’re real.
Now, with AI blurring the lines faster than we can keep up, maybe it’s time to fix that − one eyeball at a time.
Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air contributor for “The Today Show.” The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact her via Techish.com or @JennJolly on Instagram.
With Adrian Ludwig at TFH HQ in SF Yesterday
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Orb: A bold new way to prove you’re real in the AI era
