Are you human? New tool aims to help prove you're not AI

The FBI just reported Americans lost nearly $21 billion to online scams last year. Artificial intelligence voice clones are impersonating your grandchild in fake emergencies. Your Tinder match could be a bot, trying to catfish you. And when you tried to buy concert tickets this year, you likely lost to AI before the page even loaded. 

How do you even know if anyone online is real anymore?

I wrote about one potential answer to all of this last year ‒ a volleyball-sized, sci-fi-looking globe called the Orb that scans your iris and creates something called a World ID ‒ essentially digital proof that you're a real, unique human. It’s made by a company called Tools for Humanity (TFH), cofounded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. I even scanned my own eyeball. 

On April 17, the company dropped what it's calling its most significant World ID upgrade yet ‒ including a new dedicated app, currently in beta, that puts your ‘proof of human’ badge in your pocket, ready to use wherever you go online. TFH also announced major new partnerships with Zoom and Tinder, as well as ways it can help real fans ‒ not bots ‒ get tickets to see their favorite concerts. 

Here's what's new ‒ and why it matters

Zoom is now integrating World ID's "Deep Face" feature so that the person on your call can prove in real time that they are who they say they are, with a "Verified Human" badge appearing on your screen. This is to combat scammers using AI to create real-time deepfakes that can look and sound exactly like your boss, financial adviser, or even a family member in trouble. One example: A finance worker wired $25 million to criminals after a video call with his CFO. Except it wasn't his CFO ‒ it was a deepfake. The FBI reports a massive uptick in this kind of crime, with more than 22,000 AI-related scam complaints last year alone.

Then there are your concert tickets. A new tool called Concert Kit lets artists reserve a portion of their tickets exclusively for verified humans before bots and scalpers take over. TFH plans to launch this feature during the "30 Seconds to Mars" concert.

DocuSign is also partnering with Tools for Humanity to guarantee that a real human ‒ not a bot, not an AI agent ‒ actually signed that contract. Tinder is rolling out verified human badges in the United States to make sure your match is actually who they say they are. TFH told us that 18 million people across 160 countries are already verified.

But how does it actually work?

Look into the Orb once. It scans your iris ‒ more unique than a fingerprint ‒ and confirms you're a real, unique human. Your biometric data gets scrambled and deleted instantly ‒ like a glitter bomb, according to the company. What's left lives only in the World App on your phone. Tools for Humanity says it has no access to it, and when you use your World ID to verify somewhere, that platform receives exactly one piece of information: Yes, this is a real human. Nothing else. 

Here's where it gets tricky, though. 

I was cautiously optimistic about all of this last year. Let's just say the caution part hasn't gotten any easier.

Earlier this year, Business Insider reported that two C-suite executives at Tools for Humanity ‒ the chief architect and the chief legal and privacy officer ‒ both left the firm, along with several other senior staff, citing challenges with company culture and leadership.

And then there's the Sam Altman of it all. The cofounder and chairman of this company just had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his house. Ronan Farrow spent 18 months investigating him. A board member, quoted by Farrow in the New Yorker article, called Altman "unconstrained by truth." He is simultaneously one of the most powerful and embattled people in tech. Now, a company he cofounded wants to become the trust layer of that same internet? 

That's a lot to sit with. 

And the problems aren't going away. Bots and AI-generated identities are already distorting social platforms, financial systems and online marketplaces. Zoom and Tinder aren't experimenting with this out of curiosity ‒ they're responding to a growing threat.

There's no perfect answer here. Government IDs raise privacy concerns. Behavioral detection can be fooled. And biometric tools, even when designed to protect your anonymity, still ask you to trust the company behind them.

This is one attempt to thread that needle: Prove you're human without handing over your identity.

If Tools for Humanity is telling the truth about how it handles your data, this could solve a real and growing problem. If it's not, it creates a new one.

Either way, the direction is clear. As AI makes it easier to fake being human, proving that you actually are one matters a whole lot more.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air contributor for "The Today Show.”

The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that TFH plans to launch its new tool, "Concert Kit," during the "30 Seconds to Mars" tour.

Contact her via Techish.com or  @JennJolly on Instagram.