In a future where humans must prove their humanity in a world full of AI fakes, the OpenAI Orb—now known as the World Orb—offers a solution. This space age-y spherical device scans people’s eyeballs and creates an encrypted digital pass—called a WorldID—that verifies a person’s humanness without capturing images or collecting information.
Our current coexistence with AI isn’t that dire—yet. But with the rise of deepfakes in cyberbullying, political ads, and financial scams, we’ve already seen the very real consequences of not being able to tell a real from a fake. A reliable way to prove humanity could be a useful tool.
But how will the Orb work? And what will we use it for? It’s a bit complex, but today I’m going to break down what we know so far about World’s new device.
World Orb’s origins
Unveiled in May 2023, the Worldcoin Orb was a custom biometric imaging device created by Tools for Humanity. The idea was to provide global access to OpenAI’s digital currency, Worldcoin, through the World ID protocol.
Now, as a second iteration, the new World Orb has 30 fewer parts than its predecessor. This makes the device easier and cheaper to produce and, thus, simpler to distribute worldwide.
Engineering for scale
So what’s under the hood of the new OpenAI Orb? According to World, it’s powered by the latest NVIDIA Jetson Chipset—and it has almost 5x the AI performance over the earlier Orb version. It allows faster and more seamless proof of human verifications.