upworthy

phone scammers

Joy

The latest weapon against phone scammers has arrived, and it's a sweet 'Granny AI' bot

dAIsy has kept some scammers on the phone for up to 40 minutes.

Scammers, meet your match.

You wouldn’t think a story involving AI and phone scams would be a positive one…but life is full of unexpected surprises.

O2, the UK’s largest mobile network operator, recently launched Daisy, technically spelled “dAIsy,” a voice-based AI chatbot who sounds like an elderly woman. And this robot grandma has one mission and one mission only: waste phone scammers time.

As many of us know, phone scammers notoriously target the elderly, hoping they’ll have a perfectly exploitable combination of naivety and a lack of tech savviness. Which makes sweet ol’ dAIsy the perfect scambait.

Little do these fraudsters know, they are in for a mind numbingly meandering, never-ending conversation with dAIsy—a tactic many real life folks have adopted to give scammers their comeuppance. And even if and when dAIsy can’ avoid giving personal information, it’s completely fake.

The video below shows just how effective dAIsy is at her job. At one point we hear a frustrated scammer on the other line shout “IT’S BEEN AN HOUR!” To which dAIsy quips, “oh how time flies.” brilliant. Of course the best part is when she nearly gives someone an aneurysm just by calling them “dear” repeatedly.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Of course, we know that voice-based AI can, and has, been used for nefarious purposes as well. And scammers are quickly learning how to adopt this technology for their own scheme—giving convincing portrayals of distressed grandchildren and overly generous CEOs. But the great thing about dAIsy is that she not only doles out a bit of karmic justice, she also helps O2 discover common scammer tactics, which can, in turn help them create better protections moving forward.

And this is the important takeaway. Ideally we would be able to shut down these fraudulent organizations outright, but they are constantly adapting. Thankfully companies like O2 are making efforts to stay ahead of the game to make that goal more of a reality. Plus, what a fun way to deliver justice.

This is a great example of how AI, for all its inherent flaws, can be used for good. Plus we all love stories about delightful grannies beating the bad guys.