Tired of proving you’re not a robot? Say goodbye to Captcha boxes

Shira Ovide has some good news for humans: AI technology may finally kill the diabolical internet puzzles

As long as locked gates have existed on the internet, people have found ways to go around or through them (iStock)

You have probably seen Captchas in some form – puzzles that ask you to pick out all the bicycles in an image or to decipher letters that are written in squiggly lines.

These riddles are designed to let you buy concert tickets or sign up for Netflix, but to keep out someone who is using computers to hammer a bank’s website with bogus credit-card applications or employing rapid-fire software to buy video-game consoles before you have a chance.

The problem is that Captchas don’t do a great job of stopping bots. And for the rest of us, they waste time and harvest our personal information.