Online dating is already a trust minefield, and now Tinder wants to add an eyeball scan to the mix. The popular dating app has announced a global partnership with World, the biometric identity company founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman. To prove you are a real human on Tinder, you will soon have the option to get your eyes scanned by a physical orb device.
What is World ID and how does Tinder’s human verification work?
World is a company built around the idea that proving your humanity online will become increasingly important as AI bots multiply and outnumber real people on the internet. Its solution is a proprietary scanning device called the Orb, which scans your irises at its physical outlets to verify that you are a real person.
Once verified, you receive a World ID linked to that scan. World already ran a pilot of this verification process with Tinder in Japan earlier this year, and that trial was apparently successful enough to warrant a worldwide rollout.
On Tinder, users who go through the World ID verification process will receive a badge on their profile indicating they are a verified human. To sweeten the deal, Tinder is also offering five free Boosts to anyone who completes the verification. The company hopes that this incentive is meaningful enough for people to hand over their biometric data.
Is this just about dating apps, or is the World orb coming for everything?
Tinder is just the beginning. Zoom is now integrating World ID so that meeting hosts can verify participants’ identity before joining a call. DocuSign is also adopting the technology, letting users require World verification on contracts. Meanwhile, Reddit might adopt World ID as a bot detection tool.
On top of that, World has launched Concert Kit, a tool that lets artists reserve concert tickets for verified humans only, taking direct aim at scalper bots. Concert Kit will soon be tested at a Bruno Mars World Tour show in San Francisco.
Even though World is pushing hard for mainstream adoption, governments in Brazil and several other countries have banned it over privacy concerns. Whether handing your biometric data to a third party becomes the new normal is a question that is only going to get louder from here.