[bavarianbob]

Have a link?

[amatecha]

Maybe not exactly what was being referred to, but one of Duolingo's founders, Luis von Ahn, is one of the inventors of CAPTCHA:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-39200-9_18

https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/CAPTCHA_Using_Hard_AI_Probl... (direct PDF download)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

RE: the computer game thing, https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/985692.985733

[pests]

Wait, CAPTCHAs don't generate or capture any data. It prevents computer automated systems, which were a huge pain at the time. Google then came around and released reCAPTCHA which was using originally books for Google Translate but later Street view photos for Google Maps. That was when dara collection and learning was introduced.