Google has introduced the No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA, which the company said will do a better job at preventing robots and scripts from accessing websites.
Internet users will most likely have encountered reCAPTCHA when signing up for new accounts and making online purchases. For years, users have been prompted to confirm that they are actual humans by reading distorted text and then typing in the word into a box, weeding out robots and scripts from accessing websites.
However, Google thought that it would be much easier to just directly ask the users if they are human, a notion which is the basis for No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA.
Through the new API, users will be able to gain access to certain websites protected with it by simply clicking on a box to confirm that they are not robots. There will be no need for reading garbled up letters and numbers that are sometimes too difficult to understand.
Google said while the new API for reCAPTCHA looks and sounds simple, the development behind it features "a high degree of sophistication," spurred by the ever-evolving technology of artificial intelligence.
CAPTCHAs have always relied on a robot's inability to read and type the distorted text. However, the technology on artificial intelligence has developed to the point that it is now able to solve the hardest variants of distorted text at an accuracy of 99.8 percent, which renders the test obsolete.
This prompted Google to develop an Advanced Risk Analysis backend for reCAPTCHA that is able to consider the entire engagement of the user with the CAPTCHA before, during and after accessing it. The engine more accurately determines if the visitor of the page is human or not, which allowed Google to have less reliance on the distorted text test.
The No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA is the next step in this development. However, this does not mean that CAPTCHAs are going away entirely.
There will be some instances when the new API will not be sure on whether the visitor is a human or a robot. In such cases, a CAPTCHA will still be required, consequently adding to the number of checkpoints for the confirmation of a human user.
The new API, in addition, allows Google to try out new kinds of tests that will be easier for humans, especially for mobile devices. An example that Google gave was an image labeling problem that required the user to select the correct answers among several pictures from the corresponding clue. This is much easier on mobile devices, where users can just tap on the pictures instead of having to type out text.
WordPress, Snapchat and Humble Bundle are the early adopters of No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA, with early results coming back positive, Google said.
