Google Is Simplifying One of the Most Annoying Parts of the Internet

Just today, you may have been forced to squint at a jumble of hard-to-read letters and numbers to prove you weren’t a robot in order to log into a website.

That security feature, called CAPTCHA, has been frustrating Internet users for more than a decade—and it’s not even all that great at weeding out real humans from automated spam scripts, according to Google. So the search giant has unveiled a new login security measure dubbed “No CAPTCHA” that it claims is both simpler for humans and better at warding off bots.

Here’s how it works: Instead of typing in obtuse strings of text, users will simply have to check a box asserting that they’re not robots. A risk analysis algorithm will evaluate the way the user interacts with the web page to determine if he’s a person or a bot. For most people, the checkmark is all that will be required. If the algorithm isn’t sure, a user may be forced to type in the character string the old-fashioned way.

Google says that artificial intelligence can now solve the traditional distorted text fields with 99.8% accuracy, so a new method was needed.

Google is also working to make CAPTCHAs more bearable on mobile devices. Users will start being asked to match similar images in a grid instead of typing in text.

Some big names like Snapchat and WordPress have already implemented No CAPTCHA, and Google says the feature is helping users to log in faster.

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