A new report hinted at bots’ increasing prowess at solving modern and advanced CAPTCHAs prompting Elon Musk to give a shout-out to Twitter, now rebranded as X’s paid subscription service.
What Happened: Research conducted by the University of California, Irvine, has provided an overview of the evolving capabilities of bots in the realm of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart or CAPTCHA challenges.
The study, “An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs,” found that bots consistently cracked distorted-text CAPTCHAs with almost perfect accuracy. In contrast, humans achieved varying levels of success, ranging from 50% to 84%.
Additionally, bots completed these challenges in less than a second, whereas humans required up to 15 seconds per puzzle.
Musk quote tweeted the research report and commented, “Past bot defenses are failing. Only subscription works at scale.”
The tech billionaire was likely suggesting that the Twitter Blue subscription model, now called X Premium, has effectively helped get the platform rid of bot accounts.
Earlier this year, Musk commented on the platform that telling AI bots apart has become increasingly difficult and will soon be impossible. “The only ‘social networks’ that survive will be those that require verification.”
Why It’s Important: Despite Musk’s promise to “defeat the spam bots or die trying,” approximately 12% of ad traffic on Twitter during the first quarters of successive years was driven by bots, reported The Wall Street Journal, citing cybersecurity analysis, Cheq in June 2023.
In April, Musk offered a $1 million bounty for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for bot networks, a move indicative of his commitment to combating this digital menace.
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