Roundtable launches system to detect bots using behavioral biometrics

Proof of personhood (PoP) has been pitched as a kind of holy grail for digital identity, a baseline for establishing trust in transactions that can support everything from ID verification to ticketing to a complex “cross-platform reputation” that serves as a key to human agency online. Now, a new knight-errant has joined the quest for the would-be human grail, determined to slay the beasts of friction, deepfakes and synthetic identities.

How to do so? With real-time “proof-of-human” scoring using algorithmic behavioral biometrics.

A post on the Y Combinator blog from Roundtable Proof of Human describes it as a “one-line API that identifies behavioral bot patterns throughout user sessions and continuously returns low-latency proof-of-human scores with natural language explanations.” Or, more snappily, “an invisible Turing test for the internet.”

Per Roundtable’s website, “Proof of Human instantly detects bots and suspicious actors by analyzing patterns in behavior – before they can exploit your system.”

“Our models provide clear, interpretable insights, ensuring security decisions are understandable and auditable.”

Roundtable speaks of a “friction tax” imposed by devious CAPTCHA methods that serve up strange riddles and take too long to complete, and authentication systems that frustrate users in verification loops. Meanwhile, an even more fearsome monster lurks on the horizon: “fraud is exploding exponentially.”

While Roundtable’s sword is shiny, it does not yet appear to carry significant weight. The startup’s pitch is essentially for real-time bot detection through pattern analysis (typing, mouse movements, etc.). It lacks the absurd grandiosity of the World project, or the proven funding success of competitors like Humanity Protocol in developing its zero knowledge based product.

Roundtable describes behavioral biometrics as its “secret sauce” – “leveraging behavioral and cognitive signatures to differentiate humans and bots/AI agents” – but, for now, the sauce does not seem to have much body.

Nonetheless, Roundtable may have a meatier weapon stashed in its quiver: accuracy. Claiming “best-in-class bot detection accuracy (87 percent) compared to Google (69 percent), Cloudflare (33 percent) and others,” Roundtable Proof of Human can be engaged to protect the digital kingdom with plans starting at 99 dollars a month.

Article Topics

AI fraud  |  behavioral biometrics  |  continuous authentication  |  digital identity  |  proof of personhood  |  Roundtable  |  startup