'i've Got All The Time In The World': Ai Grandma Thwarts Scammers By Answering Their Calls

British telephone institution Virgin Media O2 has a caller measurement to instrumentality scammers astatine their ain game: Have an AI-generated grandma named Daisy reply nan phone.

A reside pinch Daisy intends proceeding her talk astatine magnitude astir her passion for knitting aliases her grandchildren. With nary prompting, Daisy tin accommodate to conversations and moreover proviso clone individual accusation if scammers petition it, per NPR.

Daisy whitethorn sound for illustration a grandmother, but she's really an AI ample relationship exemplary that takes successful a fraudster's voice, translates it to text, finds an owed consequence based connected a database of training data, and "speaks" that consequence — each incorrect seconds. She was trained pinch nan thief of Jim Browning, a YouTuber pinch complete 4 cardinal subscribers who fights against online scams.

Related: Nearly Half of Americans Think They Could Be Duped By AI. Here's What They're Worried About.

O2 says that Daisy has had calls that past up to 40 minutes, wherever she goes backmost and distant pinch a fraudster. There's a constituent to each of this conversation: While Daisy chatters distant connected agelong telephone calls, she's taking up clip that bad actors could beryllium utilizing to talk to existent people.

"While they're engaged talking to me, they can't beryllium scamming you," Daisy says successful a promotional video. "And let's look it dear: I've sewage each nan clip successful nan world."

O2 named Daisy "Head of Scammer Relations" erstwhile introducing it past play and says that nan chatbot serves arsenic a reminder of nan lengths bad actors will spell to proscription retired their aims. The AI is built into nan telephone service.

"But crucially, Daisy is too a reminder that nary matter really persuasive personification connected nan different extremity of nan telephone whitethorn be, they aren't ever who you deliberation they are," Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud astatine Virgin Media O2, stated successful a spot release.

Related: How Generative AI Is Fueling nan Rise of Fake News and Online Fraud

After talking to Daisy successful nan promotional video, 1 scammer angrily said, "I deliberation your business is bothering people, right?" In a abstracted instance, different frustratedly exclaimed, "It's astir been an hour!"

Since her debut, Daisy has answered overmuch than 1,000 calls, per CBS.

There's nary American balanced to Daisy yet, though spam calls are a problem successful nan United States too. According to True Caller, successful nan play betwixt December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024, Americans spent 272 cardinal hours answering spam calls. Each American receives an mean of astir 9 spam calls per month.