In a move that feels both necessary and dystopian, video meeting giant Zoom has partnered with Sam Altman's human ID verification company, World, to ensure the people in your meetings are actual humans and not AI-generated imposters. The threat is apparently not theoretical, as evidenced by the early 2024 incident where engineering firm Arup lost $25 million after an employee in Hong Kong was tricked by a video call where everyone except the victim was a deepfake. A similar attack hit a multinational firm in Singapore in 2025, proving that the era of trusting your own eyes is officially over.
According to one estimate, financial losses from deepfake-enabled fraud exceeded $200 million in just the first quarter of last year. Security industry reports now put the average loss per corporate incident at over $500,000. So while most of us won't have to worry about a deepfake of our boss asking us to wire millions, it's a serious and expensive risk for businesses that conduct high-value transactions over video. World pointed out that existing detection methods, which analyze video frames for signs of manipulation, are becoming less reliable as the AI video models themselves get better.
The new feature uses World's World ID Deep Face tech, which takes a three-pronged approach to verification. It cross-references a signed image taken during the user's registration via World's Orb device, a real-time face scan from the user's device, and a live video frame visible to other participants. Only when all three match does a "Verified Human" badge appear on that person's title, because apparently we now need a digital sticker to prove we're not software. Yes, life is indeed getting weird.
Zoom stated that meeting hosts can enable a Deep Face waiting room to require all participants to verify their identity before joining. Participants can also request mid-call that someone verify themselves on the spot. According to Zoom spokesperson Travis Isaman, "This integration is part of Zoom's open ecosystem approach, giving customers more ways to build trust into their workflows based on what matters most for their use case." Beyond Zoom, World has been busy building partnerships with consumer platforms like Tinder and Visa, and last month released tech to verify that real humans, not AI bots, are behind AI shopping agents at the point of purchase.