Amid ongoing debates over the potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence, the technology has taken an innovative turn with the creation of an "AI granny" designed to waste scammers' time. On Thursday, British telecom company Virgin Media O2 introduced Daisy, a custom-made chatbot that engages with scammers in real-time phone calls. Daisy’s job is to keep fraudsters occupied for as long as possible, annoying and frustrating them much like they do to consumers globally. The chatbot automates "scambaiting, " a practice where people pose as potential scam victims to waste scammers’ time and resources, expose their tactics, gather information for law enforcement, and confuse their devices. Recently appointed as O2’s "head of scammer relations, " Daisy impersonates an older adult, a demographic prone to scams. Unlike human scambaiters who need breaks, Daisy can remain on the phone with swindlers all day and night. “While they're busy talking to me, they can’t be scamming you, and let’s face it, dear, I’ve got all the time in the world, ” Daisy says in an O2 video. The video presents her as an AI-generated woman with gray hair, glasses, and pearls talking on a pink landline. While Daisy appears to be a mild-mannered neighbor, she effectively combats scammers through lengthy, aimless conversations.

The video features audio from actual exchanges, with scammers growing increasingly frustrated as Daisy continues talking without divulging any personal information they seek, such as bank account and credit card numbers. “It’s nearly been an hour, for the love of (inaudible expletive), ” an exasperated scammer groans, to which Daisy calmly responds, “Gosh, how time flies. ” In another exchange, Daisy is eager to discuss her cat, Fluffy, and enjoys going on tangents about family or her knitting hobby, while providing fake personal details like made-up bank information. Daisy is certainly entertaining in her role. Daisy combines various AI models to listen to a caller, transcribe their voice into text, and then use a custom large language model to respond. A character "personality" layer gives her a sweet British granny persona, based on a staff member's grandmother for authenticity, according to VCCP Faith, the London creative agency behind Daisy. “By making scammers believe they are defrauding a real person and exploiting their biases about older people, Daisy prevents them from targeting actual victims and reveals common tactics used by scammers, thereby helping customers protect themselves better, ” O2 stated. Jim Browning, a YouTube scambaiter with over 4. 3 million subscribers, assisted O2 in training the AI that powers Daisy. The company claims Daisy is already "wasting hundreds and hundreds of hours of scammers' time. " O2 encourages consumers to stay vigilant against potential scams, forwarding suspicious calls and texts to a number it provides. While an AI granny alone can't stop scammers, Daisy might slow them down significantly. Hopefully, she’ll inspire many more fake grandmothers to take up the fight against fraud.