Anyone who has been surfing the web for a while is probably used to clicking through a CAPTCHA grid of street images, identifying everyday objects to prove that they’re a human and not an automated bot. Now, though, new research claims that locally run bots using specially trained image-recognition models can match human-level performance in this style of CAPTCHA, achieving a 100 percent success rate despite being decidedly not human.

ETH Zurich PhD student Andreas Plesner and his colleagues’ new research, available as a pre-print paper, focuses on Google’s ReCAPTCHA v2, which challenges users to identify which street images in a grid contain items like bicycles, crosswalks, mountains, stairs, or traffic lights. Google began phasing that system out years ago in favor of an “invisible” reCAPTCHA v3 that analyzes user interactions rather than offering an explicit challenge.

Despite this, the older reCAPTCHA v2 is still used by millions of websites. And even sites that use the updated reCAPTCHA v3 will sometimes use reCAPTCHA v2 as a fallback when the updated system gives a user a low “human” confidence rating.

  • blattrules@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I never get the first one and rarely the second one. If it says to click all the squares with motorcycles and it’s just the one big picture, am I supposed to click stuff like the tire and mirrors? I always do and never get it right. Then most of the time they ask me to identify motorcycles, they show me motor scooters and what am I supposed to do then? I think I just need to get one of these bots to do it for me.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Fwiw they aren’t really asking about the motorcycle. I mean they are but they are washing your mouse movements and how fast you click through the images. It’s okay to get a few images wrong.

      • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not quite.

        It’s mostly wisdom of the crowd, as it always has been.

        As long as you mostly click the same squares most other people click, you pass.

        You often at random get 2-3 images because 2 of them are actual checks, but the third is a new image that you auto pass and they’re using it to gather data on what the average clicks are on it.

      • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        Not everywhere.

        Where I am, you need a special license to drive a motorcycle, classified as having an engine of 51ccs or more, whereas a scooter is any motorcycle with a less than 51ccs and doesn’t require a special license.

  • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Well yeah, I’d hope so, that’s the entire point.

    Catcha’s data collection always was with the intent for training ai on these skills. That’s “the point” of them.

    It’s reasonable to expect that the older version of captchas can now be beaten by modern ai, because they’re often literally trained on that exact data to beat it.

    Captcha effectively is free to use on websites as a tool because the data collection is the “payment”, they then license that data out to people like OpenAI to train with for stuff like image recognition.

    It’s why ai is progressing so fast, captchas are one of humanity’s long term collected data silos that are very full now.

    We are going to have to keep progressing the complexity of catches as it will be the only way to catch modern AIs, and in turn it will collect more data to improve it.

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Yeah, my understanding is that these capchas were made to harvest data to use for AI/Autopilot driven cars. That’s why they are always having you identify motorcycles, bycicles, crosswalks, stoplights, busses, etc. It’s all stuff that automatic driving cars have had a hard time identifying.

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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      18 hours ago

      We are going to have to keep progressing the complexity of catches as it will be the only way to catch modern AIs, and in turn it will collect more data to improve it.

      I wanted to use 4chan alot before I came here, but FUCK that slider capcha. I bailed after the first time I didn’t pass.

    • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      In use an add-on that does 90% of these for me already on Firefox. I would tell you what it’s called but I’m not at my PC.

      Which (on a side note) I’d totally go downstairs and check for you, but I just sprained my ankle real bad, and am dreading stairs. Sorry :(

      • communism@lemmy.ml
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        23 hours ago

        Sorry to hear about your ankle. When you’re able to, I’d also like to know what the add-on is

    • Sabata@ani.social
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      1 day ago

      As someone who can not decide if 3 pixels of a motorcycle counts as a correct square, I need this add on.

  • communism@lemmy.ml
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    23 hours ago

    And yet I can’t beat the CAPTCHAs because reCAPTCHA doesn’t like VPNs lol

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Captcha these days isn’t even really a CAPTCHA in the traditional sense since most of the work it does is based on filtering of IP and browser fingerprinting, with a certain level of gamification because the goal is not just to keep out the people they fight against, but to waste their time, would work great if it didn’t waste normal people’s time, while real bad actors have easy ways to get around it.

    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      The capchas getting really bad on Mullvad almost made me give up on using a VPN. But then I learned about Buster.

      This is my third post in a row shilling for this browser extension lol, it’s so good.

    • unconsciousvoidling@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      I was going to say I’ve straight up just left whatever website I was trying to access because I was stuck in some endless loop of clicking on street crossings, buses, bikes, and street lights.

  • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I mean, we literally train them by completing the CAPTCHAs. Why do you think you were picking things like bikes, traffic lights, cars, and busses? The only question now is what’s next…

  • Teknikal@eviltoast.org
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    7 hours ago

    I just close the page usually if I see one of these ones, I don’t have the patience to click all the boxes and then it just sends you a different one.

    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Unfortunately they’re on pages that I absolutely need to get into because my money is stored behind them. I cannot stand them, and I generally agree with you, if some random site has me doing a captcha in leaving.

  • Yer Ma@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    But, I cannot pass those 50% of the time… what does that mean?

  • XNX@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    Unless this was something people could use i dont rly see it becoming much of a problem. Most people dont even use adblockers

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Wait, so if a visitor fails the v3 Captcha, v2 is used as a fallback?
    That makes absolutely no sense.