O2 unveils Daisy, the AI Granny fighting scammers
Watch out, scammers! O2 has created a new weapon in the fight against fraud: an AI granny.
Called Daisy, this state-of-the-art AI Granny’s mission is to talk with fraudsters and waste as much of their time as possible.
Created using a range of cutting-edge AI technology and trained with the help of one of YouTube’s best known scambaiters, Jim Browning, Daisy is described as a lifelike AI Granny completely indistinguishable from a real person. Able to interact with scammers in real-time without any input from her creators, O2 has put Daisy to work around the clock answering dodgy calls.
Daisy combines various AI models which work together to listen and respond to fraudulent calls instantaneously and is so lifelike it has successfully kept numerous fraudsters on calls for 40 minutes at a time.
As part of Virgin Media O2’s ongoing “Swerve the Scammers” campaign, Scambaiter Daisy has been created in response to new research from O2 revealing 7 in 10 (71%) of Brits would like to get their own back against scammers who have tried to trick them or their loved ones.
With more than two thirds of Brits (67%) concerned about being the target of fraud and one in five (22%) experiencing a fraud attempt every single week, O2 is fighting back.
After several weeks of taking calls in the run up to International Fraud Awareness Week (November 17-23), the AI Scambaiter has told frustrated scammers meandering stories of her family, talked at length about her passion for knitting and provided exasperated callers with false personal information including made-up bank details.
By tricking the criminals into thinking they were defrauding a real person and playing on scammers biases about older people, O2 claims that Daisy has prevented them from targeting real victims and, most importantly, has exposed the common tactics used so customers can better protect themselves.
Influencer and reality TV star, Amy Hart, has worked with Daisy to produce a shocking video to show how she’s taking on phoney fraudsters like the one who targeted her. After receiving a call from someone who said they were calling from her bank on the morning of her friend’s wedding, Amy fell victim to a scam which saw more than £5,000 drained from her bank account in minutes.
Says Amy:
“I know first-hand just how sophisticated nasty fraudsters can be, that’s why I’ve teamed up with O2 and AI Scambaiter Daisy to take the fight back to them, keeping them busy with calls going nowhere.
“But whilst I love a wind-up, it’s scary to see the lengths scammers go to steal everything from passwords to bank details regardless of who they’re speaking to. Whether you are young or old, anyone can be a victim of a scam that’s why we can never be too careful when it comes to unexpected calls or texts.
“If you have even the tiniest doubt about who you’re speaking to, the best thing to do is to hang up the phone and call back on a trusted number.”
Watch here: AI Scambaiters: O2 creates AI Granny to waste scammers’ time
