CAPTCHA: More Art Than Science

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CAPTCHA prompts seem to be getting more challenging, but they shouldn’t be.

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A CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Historically, a common type of CAPTCHA users may get is identifying an object from a set of images like the traffic lights example shown above.

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Bots are becoming more sophisticated and adept at solving CAPTCHA’s and in some cases, solving prompts faster and more accurately than humans.

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However, contrary to conventional wisdom, well-designed CAPTCHA prompts should be more straightforward for humans to solve since businesses using CAPTCHA can’t afford to stop bots at the expense of ruining the user experience for real people.

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As a result, a new wave of CAPTCHA companies has formed using artists, cybersecurity experts, and game designers to create prompts that attempt to balance good user experience with bot prevention. Many of these security companies are relying on new context-based puzzles like rotating a 3D picture of an animal since they are easy for humans to solve, and no amount of training can help machines clear them at scale.

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CAPTCHA is becoming more of an art than a science, and could be a practical side hustle for some of your artistic friends :)

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