The benefits of proof of personhood by the numbers

The benefits of proof of personhood in the age of AI are becoming more apparent.

Since 2022, over 15 billion images have been created using AI. Another 30+ million are being added every day. Large language models have already achieved performance within the upper 20th percentile of human capabilities on most conventional assessments, and by 2026 it’s estimated that 90% of all content online will be synthetically generated.

Because the market for generative AI is on pace to be valued at over $1 trillion dollars by the end of the decade, innovation in the space is only expected to continue its dramatic growth—perhaps becoming the biggest technological and economic boom since the internet.

While all of this advancement brings with it the potential for dramatic societal benefits, from new medical technologies to improved business productivity and beyond, the question of digitally verifying humanness at scale remains an open one.

So how can we safeguard the ability to know who is a human, and what content has been made by them, online?

One promising solution is proof of personhood (PoP), the name given to a mechanism that verifies an individual’s humanness and uniqueness in the digital world. PoP addresses at least two of the key questions raised by the rapid growth of AI:

1. How can we limit the number of online accounts an individual can create to protect against sybil attacks?
2. How can we protect against the dissemination of realistic looking/sounding AI-generated content intended to deceive or spread disinformation at scale?

World ID is one such PoP solution. It’s a digital identity protocol powered by zero-knowledge cryptography and the core of the Worldcoin project. Using a verified World ID, anyone can digitally prove their uniqueness and humanness in a way that not only protects but enhances their privacy.

When a person uses their World ID, a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is used to prevent third parties from knowing the person’s public key or tracking the person across applications. ZKPs also protect the use of World ID from being tied to any biometric data or the iris code of the person. 

World ID uses an open source protocol known as Semaphore that, among other things, prevents the World ID data itself from being tracked to a person’s identity or to verifications in other applications.

To learn more about proof of personhood, World ID or the Worldcoin project as a whole, sign up for the blog newsletter at the bottom of this page or join the ongoing daily conversations on X (formerly Twitter), Discord, YouTube and Telegram. 

You can also find other important information concerning the project in the Worldcoin protocol whitepaper.