A new cryptocurrency project has been slammed as "dystopian" as people queue up to receive scans of their eyeballs in exchange for free digital coins.
Worldcoin is the latest bizarre endeavour of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI which built the now-infamous chatbot ChatGPT.
Altman said the scans can separate robots from humans and hopes the initiative will help "preserve privacy" in the future.
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"Worldcoin could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy," he claimed on the company's website.
The AI boss also reckons the system could be the first step in creating an "AI-funded" universal basic income, but it will first require Altman to collect millions or possibly billions of sets of scans, all of which are added to Worldcoin's database.
Now pop-up sites are appearing across the world where attendees gaze into a silver orb as the machine detects whether they're man or machine.
Worldcoin claims a whopping two million people from 33 countries worldwide have been added to the database since testing on the scanners began two years ago, with most sign-ups coming from Europe, India and southern Africa.
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At one in east London visited by the BBC, 13 people were scanned in just one day. Participants are first scanned by staring into the Orb's camera lens and waiting for a beep, which confirms the process is complete.
The orb reportedly used to talk to users during the procedure, but the voice was axed after customers said they found it "creepy".
The scan is then given a unique number which is checked against the database to make sure you haven't done the scan before.
The ball then beeps again, confirming the person has been added to the database and entitling them to 25 free Worldcoin tokens – worth an estimated £1.56 each.
The BBC said they would sell the coins they received and donate the money to Children in Need.
The system has received mixed feedback, with privacy experts fearing sensitive data gathered from scanning a person's iris could fall into the wrong hands – despite Worldcoin insisting no data is stored.
Crypto boss Vitalik Buterin, who co-founded the network Ethereum, was quick to praise the project but warned it didn't come without its risks.
"On the whole, despite the 'dystopian vibez' of staring into an Orb and letting it scan deeply into your eyeballs, it does seem like specialised hardware systems can do quite a decent job of protecting privacy," he wrote, adding that relying on Worldcoin's specialised orbs could give the organisation too much power.
Meanwhile Twitter founder Jack Dorsey took to the social network to call the project "cute" before writing: "Visit the Orb or the Orb will visit you…"
Addressing the mixed reviews, Altman said "haters" give his team energy.
"Maybe it works out and maybe it doesn't, but trying stuff like this is how progress happens," he tweeted.
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