How the internet found a better way than illegible squiggles to prove you're not a robot

Captcha has evolved from identifying mangled letters to web users unwittingly training Google's AI. Now, finally, you won't have to do anything

The experience of squinting at distorted text, puzzling over small images, or even simply clicking on a checkbox to prove you aren't a robot could soon be over, if a new Google service takes off.

The company has revealed the latest evolution of the Captcha (short, sort of, for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), which aims to do away with any interruption at all: the new, "invisible reCaptcha" aims to tell whether a given visitor is a robot or not purely by analysing their browsing behaviour. Barring a short wait while the system does its job, a typical human visitor shouldn't have to do anything else to prove they're not a robot.