Sam Altman’s Eyeball-Scanning Crypto Project Hits the US ‘At Last’

The promise of free crypto in exchange for your biometric data is now live in the U.S., courtesy of World, the eyeball-scanning project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.It announced Wednesday that it is officially rolling out its orbs in six major American cities: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco. While it toured its orbs around the U.S. in earlier promotional efforts, it stopped short of offering full services stateside.The U.S. debut for World, formerly known as Previously, World’s Under Trump, it seems that’s changed.“The United States of America stands at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation. Now, it’s time for the world’s AI hub to embrace the essential counterpart: proof of human,” World said in a “World launches in the USA, at last,” the title of its announcement reads.Globally, World claims more than 12 million people have already enrolled on its platform, with over 400,000 signing up in just the past week. It believes this biometric credential is necessary proof of personhood in a world increasingly overrun by AI-generated content—a threat that, ironically, Altman helped create through his leadership at OpenAI.The company behind World, Tools for Humanity, argues that World ID is a privacy-first digital identity solution. Its co-founders, Altman and Alex Blania, tout cryptographic protections and claim that data remains on users’ devices, not on central servers. But critics aren’t exactly reassured.World has been the target of In Germany, regulators In February, Brazilian regulators Recruitment tactics have also drawn scrutiny. Reports allege that orb operators have coerced individuals into scans, and a black market has emerged where iris data is reportedly sold for as little as $30.On Wednesday, World also released a slew of other announcements, including integrations with DecryptEdited by Sebastian Sinclair