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Daisy the AI grandma has all the time in the world to chat with scammers. Amid the heated debates about the potential pitfills of artificial intelligence , the technology has finally taken a form we can probably all get behind — an “AI granny” created expressly to waste scammers’ time. British telecom company Virgin Media O2 on Thursday introduced Daisy, a custom-made human-like chabot that answers calls in real time, keeping fraudsters on the phone as long as possible in a bid to annoy and frustrate them, just as they do to consumers worldwide.
Daisy (that’s “dAIsy”) automates the practice of “scambaiting,” which involves people posing as potential victims to squander scammers’ time and resources, publicly expose their wily ways, gather information useful to law enforcement and even confuse the con artists’ devices. Daisy, newly dubbed as O2’s “head of scammer relations,” impersonates an older adult, making her part of a demographic that’s particularly vulnerable to scams . Unlike human scambaiters who need to sleep and shower once in a while, Daisy can spend all day and night on the phone with swindlers.
“While they’re busy talking to me they can’t be scamming you, and let’s face it dear, I’ve got all the time in the world,” Daisy says in an introductory video from O2 that personifies her as an AI-generated woman with gray hair, glasses and pearls talking on a pink landline. While Daisy may seem like a mild-mannered neighbor who just wants to serve you tea, she’s ready to do battle through long, meandering conversations. The video includes audio from real-life exchanges in which scammers become increasingly frustrated as Daisy chatters away without surrendering the kind of information they want — like bank account and credit card numbers.
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Mike Tyson Fight On Netflix “It’s nearly been an hour, for the love of (inaudible expletive),” an exasperated scammer groans. Replies the calm and friendly Daisy, “Gosh, how time flies.” In another exchange, Daisy just wants to talk about her cat, Fluffy.
She’s also happy to go on long tangents about family members and her passion for knitting, or to provide fraudsters with false personal information like made-up bank details. Oh, how I love this phony woman. "It's showing me a picture of my cat, Fluffy," Daisy tells a fraudster who's far more interested in .
.. [+] her bank account.
Daisy combines various AI models to listen to a caller and transcribe their voice into text and then uses a custom large language model to respond. A character “personality” layer gives her a sweet British granny vibe. To ensure believability, VCCP Faith , the London creative agency behind Daisy, based her voice on a staff member’s gran.
“By tricking the criminals into thinking they were defrauding a real person and playing on scammers’ biases about older people, Daisy has prevented them from targeting real victims and, most importantly, has exposed the common tactics used so customers can better protect themselves,” O2 said in a statement. O2 trained the AI that drives Daisy with the help of Jim Browning , a YouTube scambaiter with more than 4.3 million YouTube subscribers.
The company says she’s already “wasting hundreds and hundreds of hours of scammers’ time.” The company urges consumers to be vigilant about possible scams and to forward suspected scam calls and text messages to a number it provides. An AI granny alone can’t foil scammers, of course, but Daisy could prove a valuable tool in slowing them down.
With any luck, she’ll inspire a legion of fierce fake grandmothers ready to fight fraud..
