Are you finding those annoying little puzzles you need to complete before you can proceed on websites harder to solve? You're not alone, and there might be a good reason for it. Experts have confirmed that Captchas, developed in the early 2000s to determine that a human is not a bot, are getting more difficult. And this tells us "something terrifying about the future," said Metro.
"At their heart is a simple equation," said The Times. The Captcha, an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, "has to be easier for a human to do than a machine" — but as machines and AI have become better at tasks and identifying images, those developing the Captchas have "had to up their game, quite literally."
If the process continues to get harder, it could cause problems for humans trying to buy time-sensitive items online, Metro said. Between bots learning to solve more Captchas and the increasingly difficult tests, Captcha technology could mean the "difference between getting tickets to a show or standing outside the concert hall looking for a scalper."
We shouldn't expect a return to the easier days of Captchas, Kevin Gosschalk, the founder and CEO of Captcha developer Arkose Labs, told The Wall Street Journal. "Things are going to get even stranger, to be honest, because now you have to do something that's nonsensical," he said. "Otherwise," bots "will be able to understand" the tests. | 
