Identity management is a critical concern for any enterprise, and it’s becoming ever more complex and convoluted with the advent of AI agents.

World ID is taking a unique (and to some, controversial) approach to this challenge by building a ‘digital proof of human’ ecosystem for the internet. Today, at its “Lift Off” event, the Sam Altman co-founded initiative made a series of announcements, which included the launch of version 4.0 of its World ID protocol, a World ID app, World ID for Business, World ID for Agents, a new verification tool called Selfie Check, new monetization programs, and integrations with Zoom and Okta.

“It’s a re-engineering of the stack around a very simple idea: Humans should have a right to exceptional privacy and security,” Daniel Shorr, chief of staff to the CEO at Tools for Humanity, said at the event.

How ‘proof of human’ works

Billed as the infrastructure for the age of AI, World ID was co-founded by Altman and Alex Blania, and is being developed by technology company Tools for Humanity, whose iris imaging technology seeks to eliminate the need to provide emails, photos, or other personal details to prove identity.

World ID’s mission is to provide “proof of human” (POH), so that people know they are in fact interacting with another human being (or a bot on behalf of a verified human), rather than a deepfake or other unknown entity. The ideal is to reduce abuse, impersonation, fraud, and misinformation, and promote trust in online interactions.

POH ensures that only one account exists per user (‘one-person-one-ID’) via Tools For Humanity’s iris-scanning Orb device, which uses multispectral sensors and infrared light to capture high-res images of a human’s irises. These images are processed in seconds on-device to generate an ‘IrisCode,’ a unique cryptographic hash based on the iris’s unique details and textures.

IrisCodes are then compared to entries in the World Chain, a global blockchain-based database, to verify the user hasn’t previously registered. This check uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a cryptographic prover-verifier mechanism, to confirm iris uniqueness without needing to link personal data.

If the IrisCode is identified as unique, the user receives a World ID that can be stored on their phone. IrisCodes are anonymized and fragmented across secure servers to minimize breach risks, preventing reverse engineering. The Orb also deletes original images by default.

Other World ID initiatives include Deep Face and Face Auth, which help identify deepfakes by performing private 1:1 face comparisons of selfies and Orb-captured images.

Tiago Sada, chief product officer at Tools for Humanity, emphasized the protocol’s open source nature, third-party auditing, and regular security updates. “It goes beyond standard end-to-end encryption, and it uses multiple primitives, including anonymized multi-party computation and zero knowledge proofs to protect you along the way,” he said at today’s event.

More than 18 million people across 160 countries have now verified their “humanness” via Orb and have used them more than 450 million times, execs said.

New World ID features

The new World ID 4.0 is a more scalable and powerful version of World ID that incorporates essential upgrades like key rotation (which detaches keys from identity), multi-party entropy (to ensure that every interaction is unlinkable), and finer credential controls (more ways to manage and protect information), Shorr explained.

It now includes a new verification method, “Selfie Check,” that can be used in lieu of Tools for Humanity’s Orb device. “Take a selfie and ‘boom, you’re in,’” Shorr explained. He noted that it’s not as robust as the Orb, but it’s “really, really compelling for specific use cases. Not every use case today requires the gold standard of Orb assurance.”

World ID also now includes agent delegation tools that essentially serve as what Shorr called “a power of attorney for your agent,” allowing it to perform actions on the user’s behalf.

“With the explosion of agents, the internet is fundamentally changing again,” he said. “How do you make sure the right humans are in the loop?”

This is especially important at critical moments where users or platforms need to ensure that a purchase or decision was intentional. At the same time, he said, “we don’t want Skynet.”

Security company Okta is now onboard, introducing Human Principal, a verification method based on World ID that is now available in beta.

World ID also announced upcoming new monetization efforts. Shorr noted that it’s difficult to monetize the network when you can’t share user data, but at the same time, being human is “incredibly valuable” in the age of AI, and the internet will want to know which users are human.

“We dug through the history books, and we came up with an inventively old approach: Fees,” he said. When services or developers ask for World ID proof, apps will pay a fee, not humans.

World ID and Zoom fighting deepfakes

Ensuring participants in Zoom calls are real people is another concern.

Brendan Ittelson, Zoom’s chief ecosystem officer, noted that deepfakes are more realistic than ever and the technology to create them is much more accessible, so it’s no longer a hypothetical ‘will this happen?’

Customers across Zoom’s user base are deeply concerned, he said, yet there are challenges with existing verification techniques and knowledge base options.

“The technology is evolving so fast, so doing detection techniques and all that is a constant cat and mouse game,” he said. “You really need a platform where you’re looking at [the question], ‘how can you validate someone and be privacy forward, but also have that strong human connection?’”

To address that problem, today’s announcements included the news that World ID is coming to Zoom. New capabilities will match live images with the Orb-verified ID on a user’s device when they log into a call. They can also verify themselves in real time; nothing leaves their device. World ID verification will be indicated by a badge in the user’s Zoom window.

Not everyone is convinced, though

While touted as a way to make the internet a safer, more democratic, and inclusive place, the ambitious initiative has been met with significant criticism.

Detractors, including the likes of notorious whistleblower Edward Snowden, warn of privacy and biometric data risks. They argue that storing iris data could create immense security problems, as well as the potential for its misuse and for unlawful surveillance.

Other criticisms are that World ID creates a central point of failure, requires blind trust in one company, and exploits vulnerable and developing nations. For instance, the initiative became massively popular in Kenya because iris scans were traded for Worldcoin cryptocurrency (WLD). This hinted at bribery, detractors note; the program has since been banned in the country, and is also either banned or suspended in Brazil, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Spain.

Further, the initiative raises concerns around data protection laws, credential theft (which can be particularly catastrophic because irises are immutable), and ‘function creep’ that could eventually restrict access to sites and force participation in the program.

Indeed, Orbs, which began shipping in the third quarter of 2025, are purchased from the private Tools for Humanity organization and are owned by “community operators,” who verify World IDs with their devices and receive WLD tokens for their efforts.

Protecting this kind of biometric data is crucial, said David Shipley of Beauceron Security: He pointed to Apple’s approach, where biometric data is securely stored on-device, and only a digital expression based on that data is transmitted, never the original biometric data itself.

“This feels like a super-bad idea,” he said of World ID. While having a secure, verified digital ID as a service that can be trusted is much needed, it shouldn’t be delivered by a private sector entity, he contended.

“Private sector control of personhood feels Hollywood-style cyber dystopian,” said Shipley. “Proof of being human and proof of being a citizen are public goods and should be delivered by public bodies that can be held accountable through democratic representation.”