An AI “grandmother” is used by a phone network to waste scammers’ time with convoluted chats.

Daisy, or dAIsy, is the name of an artificial intelligence program developed by O2, the biggest mobile network operator in the United Kingdom. It is aimed at deceiving con-artists into thinking that they are talking to human breath, more specifically, to a human grandmother.

The intention of this novel application is to keep scammers on the phone for long periods. This way, they can buy more time from these con artists for themselves and also help the AI understand the typical ways and means used by the evil-doers.

Daisy receives a call, and she listens to the speaker and types what the caller has said. After that report is made, it is fed into a custom-designed large language model (LLM), which is augmented by a personality layer, which enlivens the character of Daisy. Simultaneously, an artificial intelligence (AI) text-to-speech synthesizer designed for the purpose is used to generate a corresponding voice response in real-time, enabling Daisy to speak to the caller, as expected. A very pertinent point to note here is that O2 customers do not get to enjoy the benefits of Daisy while trying to speak to ml scamming them for personal purposes; instead, this Ai has been put into a system containing a number of the known targets for telephone scammers, which are refered to as looser. This means that, Daisy can keep conversing with the scammers- day in day out, without the need to get help of any human operator.

Virgin Media O2’s Fraud Director, Murray Mackenzie, reaffirmed the organization’s resolve against all forms of scams. O2 was quick to highlight the effective measures taken to safeguard customers through a number of advances. These are advanced firewall systems that are put in place to prevent scam texts and AI systems that work to eliminate nuisance calls aimed at improving customer safety. In addition, Daisy plays a significant role in warning the public that people on the telephone can be very deceptive, however much they might appear to be believable.

Research carried out by O2 and subsequent findings led to the development of Daisy, based on the fact that 71% of the UK population surveyed felt that they wanted to take revenge on the fraudsters who had swindled them or their close ones. However, a number of other respondents stated that they would not actively scambait, as they mostly thought that this would be a pointless undertaking. This demonstrates the conflicting feelings regarding scams and the extent to which people are ready to go in order to protect themselves or others from being swindled.

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