Meet Daisy, the AI granny developed to outsmart scammers
UK-based telecom giant Virgin Media O2 has launched an interesting new artificial intelligence (AI) tool called "Daisy." The one-of-a-kind chatbot is meant to interact with scammers in real-time conversations, keeping them busy and away from potential victims. Daisy's main purpose is to automate "scambaiting," a tactic where people pretend to be potential victims to waste fraudsters' time and resources.
Daisy's role in scam prevention
Designed to impersonate an elderly person (a demographic frequently targeted by scammers), Daisy is O2's "head of scammer relations." Unlike human scambaiters who need to sleep, Daisy can deal with fraudsters 24/7. "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," the AI granny says in her introductory video, which depicts her as a photorealistic woman with gray hair, and glasses, chatting on a landline.
Conversational tactics and scammer interactions
In the video demostrated, Daisy employs long, rambling conversations to keep scammers on the line. She never gives away any useful information like bank or credit card details. In another exchange, she steers the conversation toward her cat Fluffy, passion for knitting, and even shares fake personal data like fake bank details to further confuse the fraudsters.
Daisy's AI models and voice inspiration
Daisy works through a dedicated number, which O2's anti-fraud team added to the contact lists of scammers. The granny employs multiple AI models to transcribe the voice of the caller into text and reply with a custom large language model. A character "personality" layer gives her the persona of a charming British granny. VCCP Faith, the London-based creative agency behind Daisy, based her voice on an employee's grandmother for authenticity.
Training and impact on scam prevention
Daisy's training was supported by Jim Browning, a popular YouTube scambaiter with more than 4.3 million subscribers. She has already "wasted hundreds and hundreds of hours of scammers' time," the company said. While Daisy alone can't eradicate scams, she is a useful tool in slowing them down and perhaps inspiring more AI-based solutions for fraud prevention in the future.
