How do you tell a robot from a human being? It’s all in the eyes.

Jared Leto would know. In “Blade Runner 2049,” the Oscar-winning actor played the CEO of a company that manufactures replicants, the bioengineered humanoids that steer the storylines in the dystopian sci-fi franchise. Replicants are nearly indistinguishable from humans, but their eyes give them away (opens in new tab).

Now, instead of making bots, Leto is trying to stop them — from buying and scalping tickets to the 2027 European tour by his band Thirty Seconds to Mars. To prove that you’re a real human fan, all you have to do is — you guessed it — scan your eyeball.

So far, it seems to be working. On Thursday, the company announced that it stopped more than 100,000 automated requests for free tickets to its April 17 Humans Only Concert (opens in new tab) at the Midway. The show, which featured St. Vicious a/k/a St. Vincent and DJ Pee .Wee (the alter ego of Anderson .Paak), required attendees to provide a World ID to claim a ticket. Nearly 1,000 verified humans obtained tickets for themselves and their plus-ones. The bots got nothing.

“While there’s a lot of important things that you can solve with World ID, I think concerts and music [are] so near and dear to our hearts that we were excited to help solve this problem,” said Tiago Sada, chief product officer at Tools for Humanity. “We were blown away by the response.” 

Sada said the Concert Kit concept is simple: If a performer you love is coming to town, you should be able to get a ticket for the price set by the artist — not by overpaying a reseller.

“A lot of times it’s not even that the fans take too long to buy it. Tickets will go on sale, and within a few seconds, all of them are gone, just because of how fast the bots are,” he said. “This is a problem that is only getting harder to solve [as] AI continues to advance.”

Concert Kit works across various ticketing platforms, according to the company. To use the tool, artists and bands create a Concert Kit page, choose the verification level they want fans to use, and upload the ticket codes. (Though orb-level verification is considered the most robust proof that someone is human, World also allows you to simply take a selfie on your phone to verify your humanness.)

Thirty Seconds to Mars is using the application (opens in new tab) to set aside a portion of tickets for World ID holders for shows in Munich, Berlin, Hanover, London, and Manchester. Fans need to be orb-verified to get access to the select tickets, which come with one free additional ticket and merch vouchers.

Why not reserve all tickets for verified humans?

“From a philosophical perspective, we think that World ID should be optional,” Sada said. “Certainly, there may be fans that, for whatever reason, prefer to not join the system yet, or they just don’t have an orb near them, and I think it’s important that they have the ability to buy tickets just like they would.”

To get a World ID, you have to download the app and visit a physical World store or partner retailer with an orb device to get your eye scanned. In San Francisco, aside from the World flagship on Geary Street, there are orbs at the Gap on Chestnut Street and the Plentea shops on Third and Kearny streets.

Nearly 18 million humans have had their eyeballs scanned since 2023, according to Tools for Humanity.

“Live music is about connection, energy, and shared experience,” Leto said in a statement. “Fans wait years for these moments, and too often bots get there first. We wanted to work with World to create something that helps protect the fan experience and gives real people a fair shot at being part of it.”

So does Leto have a World ID?

“That’s a really good question. I actually don’t know,” Sada said.