«Is it me or are the tests «I’m not a robot» getting harder?», — joked British comedian Jack Whitehall in a recent Netflix appearance, complaining about his inability to correctly identify traffic lights.
CAPTCHA — is a computer-based challenge-response test used to determine whether a person or a computer is using a system. It is most often used when it is necessary to prevent bots from using Internet services, in particular, to prevent automatic registration, file downloads, mass mailings, etc.
Maybe I’m a robot?
Traditionally, CAPTCHA prompts show sets of letters and numbers that the user has to enter correctly, or a set of images — bridges, motorcycles, pedestrian crossings, etc. However, increasingly, puzzles are becoming so complex that real people cannot solve them.
According to from The Wall Street JournalCAPTCHAs ask people to identify objects of the same shape, click on a single nonaquatic animal, or select «a red object before an object that appears once» — you’ll agree that even the task itself sounds too difficult.
«I tried to log in and I got this crazy picture that looked like a bowl of fruit that was supposed to be on a table but was growing out of a tree,» wrote 38-year-old game developer Mustafa Al-Hassani. «Has anyone ever failed a test and moved on? Maybe I’m a robot».
Bots that try to imitate humans are getting «smarter» and more sophisticated — DataDome’s aggregate customer data shows that 50% «of users» who submit them are actually bots. So CAPTCHA designers are resorting to more and more complex hints to keep hackers and spammers away.
«Honestly, it’s going to get even weirder because now you have to do something stupid,» says Kevin Goshalk, CEO and founder of Arkose Labs. «Otherwise, the big multimodal models will be able to outsmart everyone».
According to the WSJ, today entire companies are emerging that create CAPTCHA hints, and Arkose Labs is one of them.
CAPTCHA — salvation a problem for business?
One of the main tasks of companies that provide their services online is to ensure a flawless user experience However, a recent study by Stanford University found that using CAPTCHAs reduces sales conversions by up to 40%, turning away potential buyers due to frustration. And it’s not just the complexity of the prompts – even simple ones are difficult to follow for users with visual impairments and other disabilities.
Invisible checks
In fact, alternatives to CAPTCHA already exist, but they probably haven’t gained the same popularity. Publications Techradar mentions the so-called invisible inspections — tools that collect tIt also detects thousands of signals in the background, such as those related to the device rather than the user, or detects proxy servers used by fraudsters.
The «Invisible» nature of these challenges means that it is much harder for robots to adapt and learn from them, given that the code works behind the scenes and does not offer an obvious test for the bot. At the same time, another Forrester study found that consumers, although they feel frustrated when faced with a CAPTCHA, they also feel more secure when viewing the test.