I’m Not A Robot – Google Unveils New One-Click CAPTCHA Checkbox

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Sick of having to put in a nearly unreadable, seemingly random combination of letters and numbers just to convince a website that you’re an actual flesh-and-blood human and not a machine? Google has heard you loud and clear.
On Wednesday, the Mountain View, California-based tech giant released a new, easier to use application programming interface (API) designed to replace the standard CAPTCHA system. Google is calling it the “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA,” a new system that does away with the need to read and replicate distorted text.
Instead, the new system uses a simple “I’m not a robot” checkbox. In a blog post, Vinay Shet, Product Manager with reCAPTCHA, explained that he and his colleagues decided it would be easier for Web surfers to just directly ask them whether or not they were robots. With the new API, most users will be able to confirm that they are human with just a single click.

According to Elizabeth Weise of USA Today, Google researchers have found that advances in artificial intelligence programs have made it possible for computers to read even the most complex and distorted text with an accuracy of even 99.8 percent. They decided that, if AI systems were getting better at identifying the text, perhaps they could also be used to develop an API that could better determine who or what was trying to get past a CAPTCHA screen.
Google, which purchased CAPTCHA in 2009, reviewed several factors, including the Web site that the person had come from, where their mouse had gone on the screen, how long it moves, how steady it was and other cues that the company would not reveal, Weise said. They found that the new system could determine if the attempt was originating from a person or a robot in just a matter of seconds, but noted that it would not work all the time.
“In cases when the risk analysis engine can’t confidently predict whether a user is a human or an abusive agent, it will prompt a CAPTCHA to elicit more cues, increasing the number of security checkpoints to confirm the user is valid,” Shet said. Essentially, when the new distorted text-free version of the authentication API has difficulty telling if a person is human or AI, it will present a more traditional prompt to further verify someone’s identity.
Mobile device users will also benefit from the new system, though it will be slightly different, according to VentureBeat reporter Jordan Novet. Smartphone Web surfers will be shown a small image at the top of their screen, and will then have to select which of a set of several images most closely resembles the original picture.
Shet said that early adopters such as Snapchat and WordPress are already reporting “great results” with the new No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA, and that over 60 percent of the latter’s traffic encountered the new API, allowing users to get to their Web sites more quickly. Novet said that Google is also accepting additional applications from webmasters who would like to incorporate the new technology into their websites.
“Given that this new version hasn’t launched yet, it isn’t quite clear what impact it’ll have, but chances are far fewer users will see these prompts and hence Google will transcribe fewer words and numbers,” said Frederic Lardinois of TechCrunch “What this new API allows, however, is a far more flexible CAPTCHA experience… This will help Google with its computer vision projects – something the company is probably far more interested in these days than basic OCR.”
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