Zoom has partnered with the World to authenticate people in the meeting

Meeting platform Zoom has announced a partnership with World, Sam Altman’s human ID verification company, to ensure that people attending meetings are real people and not AI-generated imposters.

The threat is real and growing rapidly. The most striking example occurred in early 2024, when the engineering firm Arup disappeared $25 million after an employee in Hong Kong allowed a series of wire transfers during what appeared to be a routine video call with the company’s CFO and several colleagues. Every person in that call – except the victim – turns out to be an AI-generated deepfake. A similar attack hit by a multinational company in Singapore in 2025.

Across the board, financial losses from deep-pocketed fraud have skyrocketed $200 million just in the first quarter of last year, according to one estimate, and the average loss per corporate incident now tops $500,000according to security industry reports. So while deep-pocketed video-call fraud may not be something most people have personally encountered, it represents a serious risk for businesses, especially those that regularly conduct high-value video transactions.

The World noted that although there are some efforts to detect deep fakes in meetings, they are limited to analyzing video frames for signs of AI manipulation. Both companies say that as video models get better, frame-by-frame detection methods are increasingly unreliable.

For this new feature, the World uses World ID Deep Face tech, which requires a three-pronged approach to verify that a participant is a real person. It cross-references a signed image taken during user registration via the World’s Orb device, a real-time face scan from the user’s device, and a live video frame visible to other meeting participants. It only verifies a person if all three things match, in which case a “Verified Person” badge appears on that participant’s title. (Yes, life gets weird.)

Zoom said hosts will be able to create a Deep Face waiting room that will require all participants to verify their identity. Participants may also request mid-call that someone authenticate themselves on the spot.

“This integration is part of Zoom’s open ecosystem approach, which gives customers more ways to build trust in their workflows based on what’s most important for their use case,” said Zoom spokesman Travis Isaman via email.

Beyond Zoom, Altman’s World has established partnerships with various consumer platforms, including Tinder and Visa, for human verification. Last month, it released technology to prove that real people, rather than automated AI programs, were behind AI purchasing agents at the point of purchase.