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.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Technically the “correct” answer is set by the highest percentage of people choosing it. EG: 19 people select Box A and 1 selects Box B, then the machine decides Box A is in fact correct.

    That means these AI could be selecting the wrong answers for all anybody knows, if enough of them are answering the prompts, and still passing.

  • nucleative@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    There is a Russian captcha solver bot called xevil that costs under $100 (I think, last time I looked) that has been able to solve nearly all captchas for years. You just have to supply it with relatively expensive proxy IP addresses because Google rate limits solve attempts.

    So the title of this article has been true for a long long time. Capatchas are absolutely useless except against poor or uninformed script kiddies.

  • blattrules@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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 month 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 month 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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        1 month 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.

          • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            Mopeds are similar but have pedals and can be used as a bicycle. The name itself, Mo-Ped" is a portmanteau for motor and pedal.

            Motor scooters are different in that they have a cut out for the rider’s legs/ feet so they don’t have to straddle it the same way they would with a motorcycle. Both mopeds and motor scooters do not require a license endorsement here, while motorcycles, as defined in my original comment, do.

              • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 month ago

                So a moped with a 49cc engine, astep-through design, and no pedals is a moped but a scooter with a step-through design and 49cc engine is a motorcycle?

                That’s confusing as fuck lol

                • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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                  1 month ago

                  Not really, both your examples are a moped. The definition of a moped in most places has nothing to do with the style of bike.

  • devilish666@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    So…if CAPTCHA are already beaten by bots what’s the point if it still exists ? to mock our weakness ?
    In the old days CAPTCHA could do its job, but nowadays nah…even crawler/scrapper/meta bots can bypass it easily.
    The real question is why do we as real humans still often fail to beat CHAPTCHA? Are we less human? Are we really robots in CHAPTCHA perspective ?

  • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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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      1 month 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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      1 month 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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      1 month 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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        1 month 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 month 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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    1 month ago

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

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      1 month 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.

    • unconsciousvoidling@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month 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 month 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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    1 month 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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      1 month 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 month ago

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

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      If you’re using a personal api from google, is that a way that google can track you? Part of using a VPN, noscript and adblock for me is to prevent that kind of tracking.