CAPTCHAs are becoming more and more difficult to solve and there’s a reason: AI-based bots are becoming better than humans at solving these puzzles. Millions of people have reported that CAPTCHAs are becoming more difficult and boring. Some users are asked to perform tasks that are both absurd and complex. CAPTCHA developers are designing increasingly complex tests to prevent AI-based bots from solving them easily. This development creates a feeling of frustration among Internet users, as it often turns into an obstacle to accessing websites.
CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) are puzzles used to protect websites from malicious bots, including spambots. This type of spam can completely overwhelm sites and bring them down if left untreated, which is why CAPTCHAs are very important to the smooth running of the Internet. They also help prevent hackers from inserting malware into online forms. However, their increasing complexity is starting to give Internet users serious headaches.
CAPTCHAs once asked a simple “copy the text” question, but they have now evolved to ask people to “solve questions” that require them to rack their brains. A task as simple as logging into a media account social media or trying to pay electricity bills is becoming a headache, as a growing number of people complain that the once easy-to-solve CAPTCHA has turned into a frustrating obstacle that prevents them from accessing a site And to make matters worse, CAPTCHAs are likely to become even more difficult in the future.
To be honest, things are going to get even stranger because now you have to do something that doesn’t make sense. Otherwise, large multimodal models will be able to understand, said Kevin Gosschalk, founder and CEO of Arkose Labs, a web security company that designs CAPTCHAs. At the heart of these CAPTCHAs is a simple equation: the CAPTCHA must be easier to solve for a human than for a machine. But as robots have become better at tasks and image recognition, businesses have been forced to adapt.
Companies that develop CAPTCHAs have had to raise the level of testing. A report from the University of California Irvine showed that bots could consistently respond to distorted CAPTCHA text with almost 100% accuracy. Researchers attribute this phenomenon to advances in computer vision and machine learning (ML), as well as “CAPTCHA farms,” which are sweatshops where humans are paid to solve CAPTCHAs. (These workshops are similar to click farms.) The accuracy rate of humans is lower: it is between 50 and 86%.
What started as a noble cause to stop malicious bots from attacking websites has become more complicated and annoying as users have to spend considerable time proving that they are human, one reviewer wrote. CAPTCHAs have evolved over the years and today there are several types. Here are a few :
- textual CAPTCHA, which is the most basic form of CAPTCHA and takes the form of a sequence of letters and numbers, often mixed with confusing background images to confuse robots;
- Audio CAPTCHA, designed to help visually impaired users, uses an audio recording of a series of letters and numbers. They are often associated with classic textual CAPTCHAs;
- math CAPTCHAs feature a simple math problem in a scrambled image that a computer would have trouble reading and that the user must solve to prove they are human;
- Image CAPTCHAs are a set of images that are shown to the user and for which they are asked to identify a characteristic. For example, the user may be asked to identify all images representing a car or a bicycle;
- Meanwhile, users have reported some of the most ridiculous captchas they’ve encountered. These include “Click the raccoon’s bow tie”, “Click the one that CANNOT live underwater”, and even riddles like “Click the red object in front of the object that can NOT live underwater”. “appears only once”.
Arkose Labs bills itself as the company that offers “the strongest CAPTCHA ever” and, for general threat levels, only approves it if users can solve the puzzle on the first try. But as machines have gotten better at solving CAPTCHAs, they have had to make them more complex and difficult, requiring real intelligence to solve the problem. The company’s CAPTCHAs can sometimes ask the user to solve a simple mathematical equation. According to some critics, CAPTCHAs have become obsolete with the rise of AI.
However, a spokesperson for hCaptcha, which also develops CAPTCHA systems, disagrees. hCaptcha challenges do not become more difficult for users to solve, as shown by the time it takes and the percentage of people who succeed on the first try, but any change in a familiar system can create a temporary perception of difficulty, he said. declared. According to hCaptcha, the many years of relatively slow progress in the field of AI have meant that “people have become accustomed to seeing a small number of questions about bicycles or pedestrian crossings.”
The fact that AI has overtaken a security measure intended to protect us from it has troubled many, and this is not the first time that online security measures have destabilized people. Last year, people online were excited to find out what really happens when you confirm you’re not a robot. This action prompts the website to check your browsing history and collect your data. The data collected includes your time zone, IP address, browser and plug-ins, as well as key presses, mouse clicks, browsing history, etc.
AI will certainly make robots even smarter and allow them to solve captchas that were previously problematic. However, technology is also evolving, which some experts believe should help solve the problem. For example, websites can integrate behavior analysis, proof of work, and device fingerprinting to distinguish humans from robots. That said, as ironic as it may seem to have to prove a program’s humanity, the problem is not going away any time soon, as robots become increasingly stealthy thanks to AI.
And you ?
What is your opinion on the subject?
What do you think of the ever-increasing complexity of CAPTCHAs?
Are CAPTCHAs obsolete? What are the potential alternatives to CAPTCHA?
See as well
Are CAPTCHAs still effective? AI bots are now faster and more accurate than humans at solving them, study finds
Are CAPTCHAs more than boring? An analysis discusses the negative consequences of their implementation, particularly in terms of user experience
CAPTCHA or not CAPTCHA? Gartner advocates using them, but recommends using the least annoying ones you can find.
