Captchas are supposed to distinguish you from the robots with a visual test that takes a few seconds. Except when AI manages to bypass this protection, such as Google Vision or Clip (OpenAI), it outperforms humans in terms of object detection. And the advent of these models has real implications.
AI is already causing problems for reservations.
For example, reservation systems are regularly overwhelmed by bots that easily bypass Captchas. And there are concrete examples in the UK between driving tests with months of waiting, tickets for football matches, online sales… AI has have created a monopoly to resell slots or products at a higher price. After that the real users are deprived.
However, when captchas were created by Carnegie Mellon University in the early 2000s, they were an innovative solution. These text-distortion scripts made it possible to protect sites against bots creating fake accounts or spreading scams.
Subsequently, the system evolved with ReCaptcha in 2007 by incorporating the digitization of old books. Then in 2014 there was version v2 with image recognition from Google.
But what solutions can be found to authenticate humans and distinguish them from robots? Developers are looking for new ways. For example, Google’s ReCaptcha v3 analyzes behavior: mouse movements, typing rhythm, etc. Subtleties that robots are unable to reproduce. For now?
Other solutions are emerging such as biometrics (fingerprints, voice or facial recognition) but questions remain in terms of privacy and access.
The democratization of AI further complicates the situation. Companies like OpenAI and Claude are developing autonomous agents capable of taking control of our PCs. So in the future, when these robots work on our behalf on a site, how will the platforms make a difference? “Bonus” Boots Des “Malice” ? An avenue is being studied, perhaps through a digital authentication certificate.
Online authentication must therefore be completely redesigned with a new standard between ease of use for humans and effectiveness against bots. The challenge promises to be enormous in the face of rapidly advancing AI.
