Tokenized matchmaking? Sam Altman’s World matches up with dating app giant Match Group

Sam Altman-backed World project has announced a collaboration with U.S. technology firm Match Group, the company behind renowned dating apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge.

On May 1, Sam Altman’s iris-scanning blockchain project is teaming up with Match Group’s portfolio of dating apps to bring World’s unique identification code into the online dating world. The company’s collection of dating apps include Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish and OurTime among others.

The collaboration would deploy World Chain (WLD)’s permissionless identity protocol, World ID, into Match Group dating apps to verify whether the profile owner is a real human or not. According to the announcement, the pilot project would start with Tinder users in Japan, giving them a quick and easy way to verify their authenticity without sacrificing their privacy.

“As AI continues to advance, the ability to confirm that a real person is behind every interaction will be essential to preserving trust and authenticity online. Technology helps us find each other. Real people make it meaningful,” wrote World project in its official statement.

In a recent 2024 survey, around 62% of internet users claimed they had been catfished in the United States alone. Meanwhile, 53% of them were women and 18% were between the ages of 16 to 24.

With advancements in AI, identifying which profiles are manned by real humans in a sea of digital faces becomes increasingly difficult. By employing World ID, the project hopes that dating app users will be able to find real connections with real people instead of AI-generated profiles.

World ID provides a system that it calls “Proof of Human” which lets its users verify their identity through a biometric device called the Orb, which scans the user’s iris and generates a unique code.

In the past, the Sam Altman-backed project unique iris-scanning code went under fire over privacy concerns, with authorities in Hong Kong and Brazil accusing the protocol of violating privacy laws by collecting “iris and face images of members of the public.”