Following the news, the price of the WLD token surged by more than 42% before correcting.
In April 2025, reports first emerged that the company was planning to launch a competitor to X. The project remains at an early stage of development.
The app is being built by a small team of fewer than 10 people. It is expected to feature biometric verification via Apple Face ID or Orb devices.
The World project is best known for its iris-scanning technology using a dedicated device called Orb. Users who complete the scan receive a unique digital ID and WLD tokens as a reward.
The project is developed by Tools For Humanity, co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Biometric verification is intended to ensure that every account on the new social network belongs to a real person. Competitors such as Facebook and LinkedIn rely on phone numbers or email addresses, largely avoiding biometrics despite its higher reliability for identity verification.
At the same time, privacy advocates warn about the potential risks of such an approach, as sensitive personal data could fall into the wrong hands.
The bot problem
Social networks have been battling automated accounts for years — algorithms that mimic human behavior to manipulate markets or public opinion. The problem became particularly acute on Twitter, which Elon Musk acquired and rebranded as X.
Musk declared war on bots: in 2025, the platform removed around 1.7 million accounts as part of a major cleanup. Still, the issue persists.
Altman, who has used X since 2008, has repeatedly expressed frustration with bots on the platform and referenced the “dead internet theory,” which suggests that since 2016 much of online activity has been driven by non-human actors.
“I never took this seriously, but now it seems that a large number of accounts are indeed being run by LLMs,” he wrote.
Use of AI
Details about how the social network will integrate existing OpenAI products remain scarce. According to Forbes, users will likely be able to use AI tools to generate content such as videos and images.
Instagram, which has 3 billion monthly active users, already offers AI-powered image generation.
The launch timeline for OpenAI’s social network is still unknown. However, the company has a track record of viral success: ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months, while the Sora app surpassed 1 million downloads in only five days.
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