Daisy the AI Grandma: O2's Innovative Approach to Combating Phone Scams

Daisy the AI grandma has just been unleashed on scammers - here are the satisfying results

Future versions of Daisy could feature different accents and personalities to further frustrate scammers. Daisy, an AI-powered bot built to annoy scammers, was announced two months ago - and now O2 has released some examples of the AI grandma in action. Scammers can waste your time even if they don't take your money, but O2 has proven that Daisy (or dAIsy) can mess with con artists just as well as they mess with others. Daisy loves reminiscing about the good old days, and she'll happily waste a fraudster's time talking about scones instead of handing over personal banking details. Instead of just blocking fraudulent calls, Daisy picks up, engages, and keeps scammers on the line, frustrating them with a never-ending stream of dithering small talk. O2, a British telecommunications provider, developed Daisy at the end of last year to demonstrate how artificial intelligence could be used to fight back against phone fraud and it has proven to be quite successful since. The bot was trained using real scam call data, so it recognizes the tricks scammers use to manipulate their victims. But instead of falling for their tactics, Daisy responds with an expertly crafted mix of confusion, politeness, and sheer time-wasting. When a scammer tries to convince her to download a malicious program, she might spend five minutes looking for her glasses, then another ten reminiscing about how her grandson usually helps her with "all this newfangled technology." By the time she's asking whether they prefer biscuits or pastries, the scammer is already losing patience, and it's 40 minutes later. One of the calls O2 shared features a scammer attempting to convince Daisy that her computer is full of viruses. The fraudster, expecting an easy mark, instead finds himself stuck on the line with a woman who can't seem to figure out where her Internet Explorer icon is. "Oh dear, I see something here that says 'Save As' -- does that help, dear?" she asks sweetly. When the scammer finally snaps that her "profession is bothering people," she responds with an innocent, "Oh, I wouldn't want to bother anyone. I just thought we were having a nice chat!" O2 deployed Daisy into the wild, planting fake contact numbers on websites that scammers often target. Once the calls started rolling in, Daisy went to work, engaging fraudsters in conversations that led absolutely nowhere. Some scammers eventually caught on and realized they were speaking to an AI bot, but not before wasting a lot of time that they could have spent targeting real victims. In some cases, scammers even passed Daisy's number around their call centers, each one trying and failing to get useful information out of her. In a world where scammers operate at an industrial scale, wasting their time is more than just a minor inconvenience; it's a real disruption to their business model. The more time they spend talking to Daisy, the less time they have to con actual people. Even if Daisy doesn't single-handedly bring down the scamming industry, she does her bit and can help raise awareness of how common it is for scammers to try and trick people. O2 hasn't mentioned any plans to roll Daisy out on a larger scale, but the experiment has proven that AI has the potential to be a powerful tool in combating fraud. Future versions of Daisy could include different accents, personalities, or even local slang to make her even harder to detect as an AI. Until then, we'll have to settle for the idea of an AI grandmother wasting scammer time, armed with nothing but a warm demeanor and an endless supply of off-topic anecdotes.

'Dear, did you say pastry?': meet the 'AI granny' driving scammers up the wall

Daisy's dithering frustrates phone fraudsters and wastes time they could be using to scam real people An elderly grandmother who chats about knitting patterns, recipes for scones and the blackness of the night sky to anyone who will listen has become an unlikely tool in combatting scammers. Like many people, "Daisy" is beset with countless calls from fraudsters, who often try to take control of her computer after claiming she has been hacked. But because of her dithering and inquiries about whether they like cups of tea, the criminals end up furious and frustrated rather than successful. Daisy is, of course, not a real grandmother but an AI bot created by computer scientists to combat fraud. Her task is simply to waste the time of the people who are trying to scam her. O2 rolled out "AI granny" Daisy for a short period to show what could be done with artificial intelligence to counter the scourge of scammers who have become so ubiquitous. Using a mixture of ambivalence, confusion about how computers work and an eagerness to reminisce about her younger days, the "78 years young" Daisy draws sighs and snapping from fraudsters on the other end of the line. In one call O2 released, a scammer tries to take control of her computer after telling her it is riddled with viruses. He is kept on the line while she looks for her glasses and bumbles about trying to turn the machine on and find the Internet Explorer icon. "You know, back in my day we didn't have all this technology. Everything was much simpler. What about you, dear?" she says. When he reacts with anger, saying that her "profession is bothering people", Daisy says: "I wouldn't want to bother anyone. I'm just trying to have a little chat." Another call has a scammer again trying to take control of her computer, but Daisy delays by talking about how she usually just uses it for knitting patterns and recipes for scones. "I see a lot of options, dear. It says things like back, forward, reload and, oh, what's this? Save as. How do I find the homepage?" she asks. When a third scammer tries to get her to download the Google Play Store, she replies: "Dear, did you say pastry? I'm not really on the right page." She then complains that her screen has gone blank, saying it has "gone black like the night sky". "If you are wasting our time, ma'am, you are going to lose your money because someone is trying to take your money and we are trying to upgrade your security," says the exasperated scammer. When she tries to find the icon the scammer is asking her to press, she says: "I see a triangle icon, but I'm not sure if it's the right one. It could be a slice of pie. You know, my eyesight isn't what it used to be. Let me just squint at it." "Do you have any lovely pastries in your area? I do adore a good scone," she adds. Behind the affable "hoping to" is an AI system which has been trained on real scam calls, said Virgin Media O2's marketing director, Simon Valcarcel. "It knows exactly the tactics to look out for, exactly the type of information to give to keep the scammers online and waste time," he said. The company worked with Jim Browning, a "scam baiter" who posts videos of himself wasting the time of criminals, to plant phone numbers on websites where they were likely to be found by fraudsters hoping to scam people. They included sites promoting competitions where the prizes appear "too good to be true". They then waited for the scam calls to start coming in - and, sure enough, after a few days they did. The results were then recorded on a laptop. Over a few weeks, Daisy wasted each fraudster's time for up to 40 minutes when they could otherwise have been scamming real people. Rather than be rolled out on a much wider scale, however, Valcarcel said the project was aimed at raising awareness. Some of the scammers eventually guessed they were talking to an AI bot, but future versions could use many different types of accent and persona for Daisy. Many fraudsters work in call centres, and if one has no luck in getting information from their victim, their details will be passed on to another, according to findings from the project. In one case, Daisy was passed between four different callers. Artificial intelligence is being used to combat fraud across many industries now, according to Serpil Hall at Celebrus, a technology firm that deals with fraud and scams. It is used in banking to identify unauthorised transactions and identity fraud, in insurance to verify claims, in travel to monitor unusual booking patterns and in public services to identify things such as anomalies in tax filings, she said.

'I'm a bit lost now': Daisy the AI bot speaks to scammer - video

O2 has introduced "AI granny" Daisy for a short period to show what could be done with artificial intelligence to counter the scourge of scammers, who have become so ubiquitous. Daisy is not a real grandmother but an AI bot created by computer scientists to combat fraud. Her task is simply to waste the time of the people who are trying to scam her. Using a mixture of ambivalence, confusion about how computers work and an eagerness to reminisce about her younger days, the "78 years young" Daisy draws sighs and snapping from fraudsters on the other end of the line