What actually happens when you click 'I'm not a robot' is not what anybody expected

Chances are you've clicked the 'I'm not a robot' button without giving it much thought.

We know it all too well. If we're unlucky, we're squinting at a grid of pixelated images trying to identify the tiles with traffic lights, bicycles and motorcycles.

Is the tyre of the school bus crossing two tiles or just one?

Or having to decipher the letters, numbers, or the direction of an ambiguous arrow.

And the questions only get more intense when you do things such as logging into an account or creating a new one, especially if the website is a major tech platform like X.

This security measure is called the 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart' or CAPTCHA. And it's designed to keep bots from accessing webpages.

Declaring you're not a robot is more than just clicking a button / Tara Moore / Getty

When you declare that you're not a robot, it's not just a case of clicking a button.

The sobering answer was revealed in BBC's QI back in 2020.

Ticking the box grants the website access your internet browsing history to determine whether you're a real person or not.

Writer, comedian and broadcaster, Sandi Toksvig, said: 'Ticking the box is not the point. It's how you behaved before you ticked the box that is analysed.'

'So, to be honest, I can’t tell you all the details because they keep it secret because they don’t want people trying to cheat the test, but broadly speaking, you tick the box and it prompts the website to check your browsing history.

'So let us say, for example, before you tick the box you watched a couple of cat videos and you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg, you checked your Gmail account before you got down to work - all of that makes them think that you must be a human.'

The website accesses your browsing history / StudioGraphic / Getty

So really it's Google's way of checking whether AI has the intelligence to click the 'I'm not a robot' button.

Calling it 'slightly spooky,' Toksvig continued: 'Checking the box can even spur it to analyse the way in which you moved your mouse across screen.

'Essentially, when you are clicking ‘I am not a robot’ box, you are instructing the site to have a look at your data and decide for itself.

If the machine is not sure, that’s when it directs you to click on lightroom pictures of fire hydrants that aren’t there.'

So, unless you're trying to access a website with strict anti-bot measures like most social media websites, Google leads you to the dooming tiles pictures because your browsing history wasn't enough to convince the tech giant of your biology.