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Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Gets a New Name, and New Hardware

(Bloomberg) -- Worldcoin, a startup co-founded by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, announced a new name and introduced the latest version of its eyeball-scanning Orb at an event in San Francisco on Thursday.

The company will be called World, and will use the new Orb to provide identification services — a task that the company said will be increasingly critical as artificial intelligence-enabled deepfakes become more adept at mimicking people. 

“Humanity now faces a new existential question: How will humans & AI coexist?” the company said in a statement. 

World, which is led by co-founder and CEO Alex Blania, uses the Orb to scan people’s eyes in order to provide biometric identification. The company said the latest model will use Nvidia Corp.’s Jetson chipset, and that it’s rolling out the ability for people to get the machine delivered to their house for real-time identification needs. The delivery will be like ordering a pizza, Chief Device Officer Rich Heley said on stage Thursday. 

The ID service, called Deep Face, will address the problem of AI deepfakes and offer a “powerful new way to combat fraud,” the company said in the statement. At Thursday’s event, the startup also delighted the audience with the announcement that everyone in attendance would receive a free Orb. 

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