By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Google on Wednesday launched a simpler solution to figuring out if a website visitor is human or robot by replacing the “Captcha” word jumbles that are a bane for millions of online users.
Instead of asking users to decipher a scramble of distorted letters and numbers, Google’s new system consists of a checkbox. By checking the box, users agree to, “I am not a robot.”
Google’s idea is attempting to solve three basic problems with the Captcha system that has been the norm for a decade. Captchas are nearly universally despised, user input is not that necessary, and Captchas are actually not that effective at blocking bots.
“We figured it would be easier to just directly ask our users whether or not they are robots – so, we did!” wrote Vinay Shet, Google’s product manager of reCaptcha, in a blog post Wednesday. “We’ve begun rolling out a new API [application programming interface] that radically simplifies the reCaptcha experience. We’re calling it the "No Captcha reCaptcha’”
Google found that it could figure out if website viewer was a bot or a human by signifiers based on interaction that did not require the solution to a word scramble.
The company also found that distorted text no longer worked for today’s artificial intelligence software; new algorithms can solve traditional Captcha’s with 99.8 percent accuracy.
The new system has already been adopted by popular services like messaging app Snapchat and blogging platform WordPress.
“Humans, we'll continue our work to keep the Internet safe and easy to use. Abusive bots and scripts, it’ll only get worse,” Shet warned, “sorry we’re (still) not sorry.”
Google is not killing traditional Captchas completely. If it isn’t clear if a user is a bot, the website will prompt the user to type in the numbers in a photo. On a mobile device, the new system will ask a visitor to match similar photographs.
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