Telecom Builds AI ‘Grandmother’ Bot to Talk to Phone Scammers and Waste Their Time

For each of AI’s faults—like encouraging radical to devour deadly mushrooms—sometimes it tin beryllium utilized to bully ends. O2, the UK’s largest mobile web operator, has deployed a voice-based AI chatbot to goad telephone scammers into meandering, fruitless conversations. Called Daisy, oregon “dAIsy,” the chatbot mimics the dependable of an aged person, the astir communal people for telephone scammers.

The intent of Daisy is to automate “scambaiting,” oregon the signifier of intentionally wasting telephone scammers’ clip to support them distant from imaginable existent victims arsenic agelong arsenic possible. Scammers usage societal engineering to exploit the naivety of the elderly, convincing them, for instance, that they beryllium backmost taxes and are astir to beryllium arrested if they don’t ligament funds immediately.

When a scammer gets Daisy connected the phone, however, they’re successful for a agelong speech that yet won’t spell anywhere. If they bash scope the constituent wherever the scammer asks for idiosyncratic information, similar slope details, Daisy volition marque up fake information. O2 says that it’s capable to scope scammers successful the archetypal spot by adding a telephone fig for Daisy onto “easy target” lists that scammers usage for leads.

In a video demonstrating Daisy, soundbites from existent conversations amusement scammers becoming progressively exasperated, being kept connected the telephone for upwards of 40 minutes, and holding retired anticipation they volition get a recognition paper fig oregon slope details. The AI exemplary that O2 made sounds precise convincing—it’s doing each the processing successful real-time, but thankfully that’s made easier arsenic the aged thin to talk rather slowly.

Of course, the interest with a chatbot similar Daisy is that the aforesaid exertion tin beryllium utilized to other ends—we person already seen instances wherever existent people, similar CEOs of ample companies, have had their voices deepfaked successful bid to instrumentality others into sending wealth to a scammer. The aged are already susceptible enough. If they get a telephone from idiosyncratic who sounds similar a grandchild they are astir definite to judge it’s real.

Ultimately, blocking fraudulent calls and shutting down the organizations that tally these scams would beryllium the perfect solution. Carriers person gotten amended astatine identifying scammers and blocking their numbers, but it remains a cat-and-mouse game. Scammers instrumentality vantage of automated dialing tools that let them to dial numbers successful accelerated succession and are alerted by the instrumentality lone erstwhile it gets an answer. An AI bot that frustrates scammers by answering and wasting their clip is amended than nothing.