Meet Granny Daisy – the Latest Weapon Against Scammers
It seems like we’re always hearing about the sudden upsurge of AI. It’s always in the news, on social media, and even on our TV screens. And a lot of time the time what we’re hearing isn’t particularly promising. People falling for AI generated images. AI taking people’s jobs. AI helping students cheat at their homework.
It’s no wonder many think these headlines will escalate to something resembling the plot of 80s horror The Terminator. But in the interim there is some good news at least. And that’s Daisy. Or rather, dAIsy.
She’s the latest weapon to combat Internet and telephone scammers, and she’s a full time scam-baiter. Only she’s not actually real. She’s the product of AI, developed by telecommunications company O2. And her only objective in life is to waste as much of a scammer’s time as robotically possible by keeping them on the phone for as long as she can.
After all, if a scammer is wasting their time talking to an AI scam baiting bot, they’re not out there scamming real people like you or your loved ones.
And of course, it can be pretty funny along the way as scammers become increasingly frustrated with tenuous phone calls that ultimately go nowhere.
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O2 created dAIsy in partnership with human scam-baiter Jim Browning (if you recognise the name, it’s because we’ve discussed him before and how he has hacked scam call centres) and she’s designed to be as useless and long-winded as possible, while still giving just enough hope for the scammer’s to keep on the phone with her.
The great news is that this leaves scammers with a dilemma. You might think that a scammer might give up on the more long-winded calls and move on to the next victim. The problem they face, however, is that the long-winded calls often prove the more fruitful, since it indicates the potential victim isn’t particularly tech proficient, and far more likely to fall for an online or telephone scam. After all, if the person a scammer is talking to is capable of carrying out a scammer’s instructions quickly and without difficulty, that person is likely to be proficient enough to not fall for the scam in the first place. It’s the more vulnerable and technophobic that scammers are looking for – people just like dAIsy. Or so the scammer thinks.
At the moment, scammers will come into contact dAIsy if they’re unlucky enough to call certain phone numbers that O2 have ensured are added to lists of potential victims that are traded by various scammer groups. Though it would be great if at some point in the future she could be rolled out through other mediums, such as anyone being able to forward scam calls to dAIsy when they receive them.
Check out dAIsy in action below.