Sam Altman’s project World looks to scale its human verification empire. First stop: Tinder.

In a trendy location near the San Francisco pier, Sam Altman’s verification project World celebrated its next evolution and rapid expansion of its ambitions. And it starts with Tinder.

Tools for humanity (TFH), the company behind the World Project, announced plans Friday to integrate its authentication technology into dating apps, event and concert ticketing systems, corporate organizations, email and other arenas of public life.

“The world is getting close to a very powerful AI, and this is doing a lot of wonderful things,” Altman said, speaking to a packed crowd at The Midway. “We are also now moving to a world where more things will be generated by AI than by humans,” he added. ‘I’m sure many of you [have had moments] where you think, “Am I interacting with an AI or a person, or how many of each, and how do I know?”

World (formerly Worldcoin) differentiates itself from many of its ID verification peers by offering the ability to verify that a real, live human being is using a digital service, while still protecting that person’s anonymity. There is a complex cryptographic alchemy behind this (so-called ‘zero-knowledge proof-based authentication’). The result: the company creates what it calls “evidence of man‘tools, which are mechanisms that can verify human activities in a world full of AI agents and bots.

The main means of authentication is a spherical digital reader called the Orb, which scans a user’s eyes and converts their iris into a unique and anonymous cryptographic identifier (known as a verified World ID). This can then be used to access World’s services, although users can also access World’s app without it.

Altman kept his remarks brief Friday (TFH co-founder and CEO Alex Blania was absent due to last-minute hand surgery, Altman said). He then turned much of the presentation over to World’s Chief Product Officer, Tiago Sada, and his team.

Sada explained that World launched the latest version of its app (the latest version was launched at an event in December), along with a plethora of new integrations for its technology.

World has been preparing for a while to deploy a verification service for dating apps, specifically Tinder. Last year Tinder launched one World ID pilot program in Japan. That pilot was apparently a success as World announced that Tinder would launch its verification integration in global markets, including the US. The program integrates a World ID emblem into the profiles of users who have passed the verification processes, authenticating them as a real person.

World is also trying to woo the entertainment industry by launching a new feature called Concert Kit, where music artists can reserve a certain number of concert tickets for World ID verified people. This is designed to ensure fans are safe for scalpers who use frequently automated ticket buying bots clearing out seats. Concert Kit is compatible with major ticketing systems including Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and the company is promoting it through partnerships with 30 Seconds to Mars and Bruno Mars – both of whom plan to use it for their upcoming tours.

The event was packed with many other announcements, including some aimed at businesses. A Zoom/World ID verification integration seeks to combat a suspected deepfake threat to business calls, and a Docusign partnership is designed to ensure signatures come from authentic users.

The company is also working on a number of features in anticipation of the Wild West of the agent web, including something called “agent delegation,” where a person can delegate their World ID to an agent to conduct online activities on their behalf. A collaboration has also been established with authentication agency Okta a system (currently in beta) that verifies that an agent is acting on behalf of a human. The system is set up in such a way that a World ID can be linked to a specific agent. When the agent then goes online to act on that person’s behalf, websites know a verified person is behind the behavior, Okta’s Chief Product Officer Gareth Davies said at the event.

Until now it has been that way difficult for World to scalelargely due to the verification process itself. For much of the company’s history, to get the gold standard you had to travel to one of the offices and have your eyes scanned by an Orb – a rather uncomfortable (not to mention strange) experience.

However, World has continuously taken steps to increase the ease and incentive structure for verification. In the past, it offered its crypto asset, Worldcoin, to some members who signed up and distributed its Orbs major retail chains allowing users to authenticate themselves while shopping or drinking coffee. Now the company is announcing that it is significantly expanding its Orb saturation in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company also promoted a service where interested users could have World bring an Orb to their location for remote verification.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Sada also shared that World has tried to solve the scaling problem by creating different levels of authentication. The highest level is Orb authentication, but below that World has previously offered a mid-level one, which uses an anonymized scan of an official government ID via the card’s NFC chip.

The company also introduced a low-level, or what Sada called “low friction” – which means low effort, I guess, but also “low security” – that just involves taking a selfie.

Selfie Check, which Sada’s team presented at the event, is designed to maintain user privacy.

“Selfie is private by nature,” Daniel Shorr, one of TFH’s executives, said during the presentation. “That means we maximize the local processing that happens on your device and on your phone, which means your images are yours.”

Selfie verification isn’t new, of course, and fraudsters have been around for a long time managed to spoof it. “Clearly we’re doing our best, and it’s one of the best systems you’ll see for this. But it has limits,” Sada told TechCrunch. Developers looking to integrate World’s services can choose from three different levels of authentication, depending on the level of security that is important to them, he noted.