World, the biometric identity verification project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is launching in the United Kingdom this week.

The system uses a spherical device called the Orb to scan people’s eyes for identity verification.

It will be available in London starting Thursday and plans to expand to other major U.K. cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Belfast, and Glasgow in the coming months, according to CNBC.

The project aims to confirm a person’s identity using the Orb device and prevent the fraudulent use of AI technologies such as deep fakes.

It scans the face and iris to create a unique code that verifies the individual is human, not artificial intelligence.

After a person generates their iris code, they are awarded some WLD cryptocurrency from World and receive an anonymous identifier known as World ID.

This ID can be used to sign into various applications, including Minecraft, Reddit, and Discord.

The chief architect at Tools for Humanity, Adrian Ludwig, a key partner in the World project, stated that interest from businesses and governments is growing rapidly as AI-related fraud becomes a rising threat across industries like banking and online gaming.

“The idea is no longer just something that’s theoretical. It’s something that’s real and affecting them every single day,” Ludwig said, adding that World is now transitioning “from science project to a real network.”

Since launching as “Worldcoin” in 2021, Altman’s World has faced scrutiny over potential privacy risks. The company says it mitigates these concerns by encrypting biometric data and deleting the original scans.

It also uses a decentralized network of users’ smartphones—rather than cloud storage—to carry out identity verification.