(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
Iris recognition continues to make the news. Let’s review what iris recognition is and its benefits (and drawbacks), why Apple made the news last month, and why Worldcoin is making the news this month.
What is iris recognition?
There are a number of biometric modalities that can identify individuals by “who they are” (one of the five factors of authentication). A few examples include fingerprints, faces, voices, and DNA. All of these modalities purport to uniquely (or nearly uniquely) identify an individual.
One other way to identify individuals is via the irises in their eyes. I’m not a doctor, but presumably the Cleveland Clinic employs medical professionals who are qualified to define what the iris is.
The iris is the colored part of your eye. Muscles in your iris control your pupil — the small black opening that lets light into your eye.
From https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22502-iris
![](https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/22502-iris.webp?w=800)
And here’s what else the Cleveland Clinic says about irises.
The color of your iris is like your fingerprint. It’s unique to you, and nobody else in the world has the exact same colored eye.
From https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22502-iris
John Daugman and irises
But why use irises rather than, say, fingerprints and faces? The best person to answer this is John Daugman. (At this point several of you are intoning, “John Daugman.” With reason. He’s the inventor of iris recognition.)
Here’s an excerpt from John Daugman’s 2004 paper on iris recognition:
(I)ris patterns become interesting as an alternative approach to reliable visual recognition of persons when imaging can be done at distances of less than a meter, and especially when there is a need to search very large databases without incurring any false matches despite a huge number of possibilities. Although small (11 mm) and sometimes problematic to image, the iris has the great mathematical advantage that its pattern variability among different persons is enormous.
Daugman, John, “How Iris Recognition Works.” IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 14, NO. 1, JANUARY 2004. Quoted from page 21. (PDF)
Or in non-scientific speak, one benefit of iris recognition is that you know it is accurate, even when submitting a pair of irises in a one-to-many search against a huge database. How huge? We’ll discuss later.
Brandon Mayfield and fingerprints
Remember that Daugman’s paper was released roughly two months before Brandon Mayfield was misidentified in a fingerprint comparison. (Everyone now intone “Brandon Mayfield.”)
If you want to know the details of that episode, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General issued a 330 page report (PDF) on it. If you don’t have time to read 330 pages, here’s Al Jazeera’s shorter version of Brandon Mayfield’s story.
While some of the issues associated with Mayfield’s misidentification had nothing to do with forensic science (Al Jazeera spends some time discussing bias, and Itiel Dror also looked at bias post-Mayfield), this still shows that fingerprints are remarkably similar and that it takes care to properly identify people.
Police agencies, witnesses, and faces
And of course there are recent examples of facial misidentifications (both by police agencies and witnesses), again not necessarily forensic science related, and again showing the similarity of faces from two different people.
Iris “data richness” and independent testing
Why are irises more accurate than fingerprints and faces? Here’s what one vendor, Iris ID, claims about irises vs. other modalities:
At the root of iris recognition’s accuracy is the data-richness of the iris itself. The IrisAccess system captures over 240 degrees of freedom or unique characteristics in formulating its algorithmic template. Fingerprints, facial recognition and hand geometry have far less detailed input in template construction.
Iris ID, “How It Compares.” (Link)
Enough about claims. What about real results? The IREX 10 test, independently administered by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, measures the identification (one-to-many) accuracy of submitted algorithms. At the time I am writing this, the ten most accurate algorithms provide false negative identification rates (FNIR) between 0.0022 ± 0.0004 and 0.0037 ± 0.0005 when two eyes are used. (Single eye accuracy is lower.) By the time you see this, the top ten algorithms may have changed, because the vendors are always improving.
![](https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/irex10-2eye-20230728.png?w=907)
While the IREX10 one-to-many tests are conducted against databases of less than a million records, it is estimated that iris one-to-many accuracy remains high even with databases of a billion people—something we will return to later in this post.
Iris drawbacks
OK, so if irises are so accurate, why aren’t we dumping our fingerprint readers and face readers and just using irises?
In short, because of the high friction in capturing irises. You can use high-resolution cameras to capture fingerprints and faces from far away, but as of now iris capture usually requires you to get very close to the capture device.
![](https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/iris-image-capture-device-2020.jpg?w=1024)
Which I guess is better than the old days when you had to put your eye right up against the capture device, but it’s still not as friendly (or intrusive) as face capture, which can be achieved as you’re walking down a passageway in an airport or sports stadium.
Irises and Apple Vision Pro
So how are irises being used today? You may or may not have hard last month’s hoopla about the Apple Vision Pro, which uses irises for one-to-one authetication.
![](https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/portrait_base__bwsgtdddcl7m_large.jpg?w=620)
I’m not going to spend a ton of time delving into this, because I just discussed Apple Vision Pro in June. In fact, I’m just going to quote from what I already said.
And when all of us heard about Vision Pro, one of the things that Apple shared about it was its verification technique. Not Touch ID or Face ID, but Optic ID. (I like naming consistency.)
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/06/12/vision-pro-not-revolutionary-biometrics-event/
![](https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/eye-screenshot-2023-06-11-114527.png?w=820)
In short, as you wear the headset (which by definition is right on your head, not far away), the headset captures your iris images and uses them to authenticate you.
It’s a one-to-one comparison, not the one-to-many comparison that I discussed earlier in this post, but it is used to uniquely identify an individual.
But iris recognition doesn’t have to be used for identification.
Irises and Worldcoin
“But wait a minute, John,” you’re saying. “If you’re not using irises to determine if a person is who they say they are, then why would anyone use irises?”
Enter Worldcoin, which I mentioned in passing in my early July age estimation post.
Over the past several years, I’ve analyzed a variety of identity firms. Earlier this year I took a look at Worldcoin….Worldcoin’s World ID emphasizes privacy so much that it does not conclusively prove a person’s identity (it only proves a person’s uniqueness)…
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/03/age-estimation/
That’s the only thing that I’ve said about Worldcoin, at least publicly. (I looked at Worldcoin privately earlier in 2023, but that report is not publicly accessible and even I don’t have it any more.)
Worldcoin’s July 24 announcement
I guess it’s time for me to revisit Worldcoin, since the company made a super-big splashy announcement on Monday, July 24.
The Worldcoin Foundation today announced that Worldcoin, a project co-founded by Sam Altman, Alex Blania and Max Novendstern, is now live and in a production-grade state.
The launch includes the release of the World ID SDK and plans to scale Orb operations to 35+ cities across 20+ countries around the world. In tandem, the Foundation’s subsidiary, World Assets Ltd., minted and released the Worldcoin token (WLD) to the millions of eligible people who participated in the beta; WLD is now transactable on the blockchain….
“In the age of AI, the need for proof of personhood is no longer a topic of serious debate; instead, the critical question is whether or not the proof of personhood solutions we have can be privacy-first, decentralized and maximally inclusive,” said Worldcoin co-founder and Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania. “Through its unique technology, Worldcoin aims to provide anyone in the world, regardless of background, geography or income, access to the growing digital and global economy in a privacy preserving and decentralized way.”
From https://worldcoin.org/blog/announcements/worldcoin-project-launches
Worldcoin does NOT positively identify people…but it can still pay you
A very important note: Worldcoin’s purpose is not to determine identity (that a person is who they say they are). Worldcoin’s purpose is to determine uniqueness: namely, that a person (whoever they are) is unique among all the billions of people in the world. Once uniqueness is determined, the person can get money money money with an assurance that the same person won’t get money twice.
![](https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/recent-worldcoin-price.png?w=908)
OK, so how are you going to determine the uniqueness of a person among all of the billions of people in the world?
Using the Orb to capture irises
As far as Worldcoin is concerned, irises are the best way to determine uniqueness, echoing what others have said.
Iris biometrics outperform other biometric modalities and already achieved false match rates beyond 1.2× 10−141.2×10−14 (one false match in one trillion[9]) two decades ago[10]—even without recent advancements in AI. This is several orders of magnitude more accurate than the current state of the art in face recognition.
From https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-age-of-ai
So how is Worldcoin going to capture millions, and eventually billions, of iris pairs?
By using the Orb. (You may intone “the Orb” now.)
To complete your Worldcoin registration, you need to find an Orb that will capture your irises and verify your uniqueness.
Now you probably won’t find an Orb at your nearby 7 Eleven; as I write this, there are only a little over 100 listed locations in the entire world where Orbs are deployed. I happen to live within 50 miles of Santa Monica, where an Orb was recently deployed (by appointment only, unavailable on weekends, and you know how I feel about driving on Southern California freeways on a weekday).
But now that you can get crypto for enrolling at an Orb, people are getting more excited about the process, and there will be wider adoption.
Whether this will make a difference in the world or just be a fad remains to be seen.