Virgin Media O2 UK Creates AI Granny to Waste Scammers Time UPDATE

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has done something rather crafty by creating a “human-like” AI (Artificial Intelligence) ‘Granny’ called Daisy, which is designed to answer calls in real-time from fraudsters and then keep them on the phone and away from customers for as long as possible – wasting them time and money.

Most of the United Kingdom’s major broadband, phone and mobile network providers have already implemented various technical measures to tackle Nuisance Calls and Scam Calls. But rarely do we see systems that are designed to actually retaliate against such calls.

Fraudsters typically robotically call masses of numbers but will only commit any actual human resources toward the tiny minority of people who might actually fall for one of their scams. Suffice to say that if you can waste the time of the human scammers, then that’s another actual human that they won’t be able to engage while their time is being wasted.

This is where Daisy comes into play, which combines various AI models that work together to listen and respond to fraudulent calls instantaneously and is said to be so lifelike that it has successfully kept numerous fraudsters on calls for 40 minutes at a time.

The AI Scambaiter has thus far 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, Daisy has prevented them from targeting real victims.

Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud at VMO2, said:

“We’re committed to playing our part in stopping the scammers, investing in everything from firewall technology to block out scam texts to AI-powered spam call detection to keep our customers safe.

The newest member of our fraud-prevention team, Daisy, is turning the tables on scammers – outsmarting and outmanoeuvring them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line.

But crucially, Daisy is also a reminder that no matter how persuasive someone on the other end of the phone may be, they aren’t always who you think they are. With scammers operating fulltime call centres specifically to target Brits, we’re urging everyone to remain vigilant and help play their part in stopping fraud by forwarding on dodgy calls and texts to 7726 for free.”

The press release doesn’t completely clarify how Daisy decides which calls to answer and whether it has its own number, or if it instead responds to known scammers that are trying to call customers numbers (i.e. essentially, impersonating the customer). But we have asked about this and hope to report back later.

As part of this, Influencer and reality TV star, Amy Hart, has worked with Daisy to produce a new video that shows 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 a matter of minutes.

UPDATE 9:30am

VMO2 has informed ISPreview that Daisy has her own number, and they worked with one of the UK’s biggest scambaiters, Jim Browning, to help them attract scam calls to the AI. “Working with Jim and using a range of tactics including something known as number seeding, we were able to get Daisy’s phone number added to a list of online ‘mugs lists’ used by scammers targeting UK consumers,” said the operator.