British telecommunications company Virgin Media O2 has a latest strategy to trick fraudsters at their very own game: ask an AI-generated grandmother named Daisy to reply the phone.
Talking to Daisy means hearing her talk at length about her passion for knitting or about her grandchildren. Without prompting, Daisy can adapt to conversations and even provide false personal information if scammers ask for it. via NPR.
Daisy may sound like a grandma, but she’s actually a multilingual AI model that takes the impostor’s voice, translates it into text, finds the appropriate response based on a database of coaching data, and “speaks” that response – all in a matter of seconds. She trained with help Jim BrowningA YouTuber with over 4 million subscribers who fights against online fraud.
O2 says Daisy had conversations lasting as much as 40 minutes during which she was in contact with the scammer. This whole conversation makes sense: while Daisy is on the phone, she is taking over time that the bad actors may very well be using to check with real people.
“When they’re busy talking to me, they can’t fool you,” Daisy says promotional video. “And let’s face it, honey: I have all the time in the world.”
When O2 appointed Daisy ‘head of fraud relations’. introducing it last month and says the chatbot is a reminder of how far bad actors will go to realize their goals. Artificial intelligence is built into the telephone service.
“But most importantly, Daisy is also a reminder that no matter how convincing the person on the other end of the phone may be, they are not always who they think they are” – Murray Mackenzie, director of fraud at Virgin Media O2, he stated in a press release.
After talking to Daisy in the promotional video, one of the scammers said angrily, “I think your profession bothers people, right?” In one other instance, one other frustrated exclaimed, “It’s been almost an hour!”
Since her debut, Daisy has received over 1,000 calls, in response to CBS.
There is no US reminiscent of Daisy yet, although spam calls are also a problem in the US. According to An actual conversationalistbetween December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024, Americans spent 272 million hours responding to spam calls. On average, every American receives about nine spam calls monthly.