AgeCAPTCHA: an Image-based CAPTCHA that Annotates Images of Human Faces with their Age Groups

Abstract

Annotating images with tags that describe the content of the images facilitates image retrieval. However, this task is challenging for both humans and computers. In response, a new approach has been proposed that converts the manual image annotation task into CAPTCHA challenges. However, this approach has not been widely used because of its weak security and the fact that it can be applied only to annotate for a specific type of attribute clearly separated into mutually exclusive categories (e.g., gender). In this paper, we propose a novel image annotation CAPTCHA scheme, which can successfully differentiate between humans and computers, annotate image content difficult to separate into mutually exclusive categories, and generate verified test images difficult for computers to identify but easy for humans. To test its feasibility, we applied our scheme to annotate images of human faces with their age groups and conducted user studies. The results showed that our proposed system, called AgeCAPTCHA, annotated images of human faces with high reliability, yet the process was completed by the subjects quickly and accurately enough for practical use. As a result, we have not only verified the effectiveness of our scheme but also increased the applicability of image annotation CAPTCHAs.