The Worldcoin Foundation has made a significant announcement in a blog post, stating that it has released open-source components of its iris-scanning Orbs software to the public. The core elements of the Orb software can now be accessed on GitHub under a dual license of MIT/Apache 2.0. This release complements the hardware that was previously made available.
Included in the release is the code for the Orb, which is crucial for capturing images and securely transferring them to the product’s app. The Worldcoin Foundation believes that this move towards open-sourcing the software and iris recognition repositories is a significant step towards transparency in image processing and privacy claims.
In addition to making more of the software behind the eye-scanning Orb open-source, Worldcoin has also introduced a new privacy feature called “Personal Custody.” This feature allows individual users to have control over their data by signing a data package with the Orb’s private key and encrypting it with their own public key before it is transferred to their mobile phone. Only the user can decrypt this biometric data, ensuring that they always remain in control.
The Worldcoin Foundation hopes that this new feature will reduce the number of times users need to return to an Orb to verify their World ID. This update comes at a time when the company is facing scrutiny from global regulators over privacy concerns. The Kenyan government recently denied a request from the US government to revoke its suspensions of the Worldcoin project, citing the need to ensure the safety and integrity of financial details for the Kenyan people.
While Worldcoin maintains that it operates lawfully and is fully compliant with data collection and transfer regulations, it has faced pushback from the Spanish Agency for the Protection of Data, which issued a temporary ban on its operations and demanded that it stop collecting and processing data locally.
Worldcoin was co-founded by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind the AI-based chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI itself is currently under scrutiny for its decision not to release the code for its AI models.
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