Google has a new easier system to check whether a Web visitor is a bot or a human. The "No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA" now uses only a check box to block non-human site visitors.
In the past few years, CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, has been used by thousands if not millions of websites to block spam bots and abusive scripts of code.
Web users are forced to read and type in distorted text in a box to confirm that they are really humans, as the method relies on the robot's inability to solve the distorted text.
Aside from being very inconvenient to human users, the CAPTCHA method is proving to be ineffective by today's technology standards, according to Google.
"However, our research recently showed that today's artificial intelligence technology can solve even the most difficult variant of distorted text at 99.8 percent accuracy. Thus distorted text, on its own, is no longer a dependable test," wrote reCAPTCHA product manager Vinay Shet from Google in a blog post.
Google then developed the No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA application programming interface (API). The new API allows humans to just click on a checkbox and match images, instead of going through the annoying process of reading and typing of cluttered CAPTCHA text.
However, the California-based Internet giant is not the first to think of a new CAPTCHA method as various websites have already implemented alternatives such as game-type or even calculus-based CAPTCHAs.
The new image reCAPTCHA method is also mobile-friendly as tapping photos is easier than having to input distorted text on a handset.
Humble Bundle, Wordpress, Snapchat and other websites have already shifted to the new No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA API.