British telecommunications company Virgin Media O2 has introduced an AI-based chatbot called Daisy to prevent phone scams. Daisy is an AI that imitates the voice and personality of a grandmother, and it wastes time by having long conversations with scammers and prevents real damage. It talks to scammers about fake family stories and everyday things like knitting as if they were real.
Developed in partnership with VCCP Faith, and with advice from famous scammer YouTuber Jim Browning, Daisy has created technology that can hold conversations with scammers for up to 40 minutes. Modeled after an actual O2 employee’s grandmother, Daisy has a realistic voice and personality, and uses an AI-based language model to analyze and respond appropriately to scammers’ speech. Daisy’s responses have been evaluated as being sophisticated enough to fool scammers, and are nearly indistinguishable from a real person.
O2 blocks millions of spam texts and calls every month and offers AI-based spam blocking tools and caller ID services free to all customers. The company hopes the campaign will raise awareness of fraud and that technologies like Daisy will play a key role in reducing the number of victims.
