OpenAI founder's world currency is suspended? High-profile collection of iris data draws European regulatory probe

**Source: **Financial Association

Edit Shi Zhengcheng

With the official launch of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's Worldcoin (Worldcoin) last week, this behavior of collecting human iris data around the world has quickly aroused deep concerns about regulation.

Here is a brief background introduction. As a science and technology star who has become famous early, Altman is also thinking about another problem while working on ChatGPT: as the earth enters the era of general artificial intelligence, a large number of human beings will not need to work, so how to share the benefits of the AI era generally and fairly Wealth became the immediate issue. Therefore, Altman and partner Alex Blania came up with the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

(Sam Altman (right) and Alex Blania, source: Worldcoin)

So in summary, the vision of the Worldcoin project is to regularly airdrop tokens called "Worldcoin" to 1 billion registered users around the world. Different from the fact that we usually need to receive a mobile phone verification code to register an App, Altman regards human iris data as a condition for activating an account (World ID). To this end, the company has developed a spherical iris scanning device called Orb, which has been put into dozens of cities around the world.

(Internal structure of Orb, source: Worldcoin official website)

After the explosion of generative AI this year, Altman also gave World ID a new role: **In the Internet environment where fake accounts are flying all over the sky, humans will increasingly need tools to "prove that they are human", relying on iris data The World ID can be a fairly reliable authentication tool. **

In fact, supervision has long been on the eye

Going back to the question mentioned at the beginning of the article, this kind of large-scale collection and use of iris data will naturally arouse heated discussions in public opinion, and it is only natural that the supervision committee will intervene.

According to data from the official website on Monday, currently, the total number of World ID registrations has reached 2.14 million. With the help of OpenAI, this project exceeded 1 million registered users in January this year, and then ushered in its 2 millionth user in July this year.

(Source: Worldcoin official website)

According to media reports on Monday, the German Bavarian State Data Protection and Supervisory Office confirmed that ** considering that this project will collect sensitive data on a large scale, it has actually launched an investigation since November last year. **

Even though this is just a state government office, since Tools For Humanity, the parent company behind Worldcoin, has a local subsidiary, within the EU region, Bavaria's data office will lead the investigation of Worldcoin.

The head of the office, Michael Will, said there were risks to the technology, such as whether users explicitly consented to the processing of their highly sensitive biometric data on the basis of "sufficient and unambiguous" information.

Coincidentally, CNIL, the French data regulator, also stated that the legality of Worldcoin's data collection and the conditions for storing biometric data seem to be questionable. CNIL also confirmed that the data department of the German state of Bavaria will lead the investigation, and France will also cooperate.

In addition, the British data regulator also stated last week that the government has noticed the issuance of Worldcoin in the UK and will further raise questions about the relevant companies. **