UK-based mobile operator Virgin Media O2 has created an AI-generated “scambaiter” tool to stall scammers. The AI tool, called Daisy, mimics the voice of an elderly woman and performs one simple task: talk to fraudsters and “waste as much of their time as possible.”
Here’s how Daisy works: O2 added phone numbers linked to its AI tool to the lists used by scammers to target vulnerable people. When a scammer dials a number linked to Daisy, the AI tool can have random conversations about its made-up family and hobbies or provide fake bank details to beat scammers at their own game.
Daisy has been taking calls from fraudsters for the past several weeks, O2 says. “By tricking the criminals into thinking they were defrauding a real person and playing on scammers biases about older people, Daisy has prevented them from targeting real victims and, most importantly, has exposed the common tactics used.”
The telecom operator came up with the idea for Daisy after a survey revealed that 71% of Brits wanted to get back at scammers without wasting their own time.
Multiple AI models were used to create Daisy, which was trained with the help of YouTuber and scam baiter Jim Browning. The tool now transcribes the caller’s voice to text and generates appropriate responses using a large language model. All of this takes place without input from an operator. At times, Daisy keeps fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes, O2 says.
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“We’re committed to playing our part in stopping the scammers, investing in everything from firewall technology to block out scam texts to AI-powered spam call detection to keep our customers safe,” says Murray Mackenzie, director of fraud at Virgin Media O2.
Last year, a group of Australian cybersecurity experts developed a chatbot that does the same thing as O2’s tool. Apate, named after the Greek goddess of deceit, essentially takes ChatGPT-style technology and pairs it with voice cloning to create a dummy human designed to hold long and convincing conversations with a scammer.
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