IReCAPTCHA: a robust image-reasoning CAPTCHA system

Abstract CAPTCHAs are widely used as authentication methods in mobile applications and web-based services to prevent AI bots from gaining unauthorized access. Early CAPTCHAs relied on image-based techniques, distorting text within images to make it difficult for bots to decipher. However, modern AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) systems can now easily bypass these measures. To address this limitation, image-reasoning CAPTCHAs were introduced. Basic versions of these rely solely on o