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A telephone operator creates a “grandmother” using AI to waste scammers’ time

“So, where should I click? » Sigh on the other end of the line. Explaining to grandma how to open her mailbox on the phone is always a bit of a pain, and requires patience. An experience which gave the British telephone operator O2 an idea: what if we used fake grandmothers to waste the time of telephone scammers?

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On November 14, the operator unveiled its “Daisy” program, a generative artificial intelligence playing the role of a chatty grandmother on the other end of the line. In a presentation video, the operator shows Daisy in action, speaking in a slow, monotone voice, repeating the person's instructions or explaining “just wanting a little conversation.” The goal: to keep the scammer online as long as possible so that he doesn't target real people.

Scammers held for more than 40 minutes

“While they're busy talking to me, they can't scam you,” slips the virtual grandmother in a mischievous tone. According to O2, Daisy has previously held off scammers for more than 40 minutes. And the advantage of this AI is that it can hold many scammers at the same time.

To make them fall into the trap, O2 explained to our colleagues at Info that they deliberately put Daisy's phone number in “mug lists”, online lists collected by scammers. The operator also offers a number to report attempted scams and thus ensure that Daisy is also in the path of unknown numbers that harass subscribers.

France

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