CAPTCHA — you know, those indecipherable text boxes you have to type in at websites to verify that you’re human — may be a thing of the past if one Detroit-based startup gets its way, Digital Trends reports.

There are several methods the Internet uses to separate humans from robots, whether you’re attempting to post a comment on your favorite blog or watch a video (or recover a lost password).  Most verification systems use CAPTCHAs, an often illegible combination of letters and numbers you must accurately decipher to view or post content.

Don’t you just hate it when you often need to solve a captcha whenever you want to log in to select websites? You know, those irritating slanted and jumbled group of letters and numbers, where sometimes, you cannot even tell whether it is the letter ‘o’ or the number ’0′, or if the particular letter is in the uppercase or not.

Detroit-based startup Are You a Human has come up with an game-based alternative to the Captcha, those word-based authentication systems used around the web.

One of the most frustrating parts of logging into some websites is trying to solve a “captcha,” the jumbled, slanted and often maddeningly indecipherable group of letters used to verify that you are in fact a human and not an automated “bot,” or program.

I was contacted to locally participate in a user review/demo of a new plug-in Are You A Human is developing for WordPress.org users. It s supposed to eliminate CAPTCHA while still providing a lot of security, by making it fun with games. Makes me want to move over to WordPress.org sooner than later. I need to get on that. It was fun to do, really fast,and hey, who doesn’t hate CAPTCHA. The more work you need to do to leave a comment, the less likely you are to do it.

All of us have been proved non-human at some point or another by rogue CAPTCHAs. They are often unreadable and almost always annoying. PlayThru is a great alternative to traditional CAPTCHAs where instead of words or phrases, the CAPTCHA requires you to complete a 2-3 second game. Once you complete the dead simple game, you can proceed to the actual webpage.

We’ve all had to go through the horrible pain of filling out a form online. We input all the necessary information and get to the end, only to face off with those obnoxious, squiggly letters and numbers, trying desperately to fill out the confusing, off-putting image to prove we’re not a spammer robot.