Telecommunications giant Virgin Media O2, a joint venture subsidiary of Telefonica SA (NYSE: TEF) and Liberty Global Ltd Class A (NASDAQ: LBTYA), is now using the power of AI to toy with telescammers.
The company unveiled its AI Granny bot on Wednesday. This “custom-built AI scambaiter” goes by the name Daisy. It has kept multiple fraudsters on the line for 40 minutes or longer by letting them think they are succeeding at their schemes while wasting their time with meaningless small talk.
“Daisy is turning the tables on scammers,” Virgin Media O2 fraud expert, Murray Mackenzie, said, “outsmarting and outmanoeuvring them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line.”
Daisy’s creation was made possible with help from leading UK scambaiter Jim Browning. He runs a YouTube channel about various fraud schemes with over 4.3 million subscribers.
“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,” an O2 spokesperson told San Francisco’s publication The Register. “We then just had to wait for the calls to come in, with Daisy poised and ready to answer whenever the phone rang 24/7.”
Browning’s multiple recordings of scammers were used to help train the elderly-sounding virtual grandmother.
The reveal comes days before the beginning of International Fraud Awareness Week — an initiative created by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
If you’re looking for a brilliant example of #AI for good, look no further than #dAIsy – @O2 ‘s Artificially Intelligent weaponised granny.
The telecom giant has created this ‘Head of Scammer Relations’ to keep 1000s of fraudsters on the phone for as long as possible – talking… pic.twitter.com/0xj8A7BRfU
— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) November 14, 2024
Read more: Qure.ai’s qXR software helps provide Scottish woman with lung cancer diagnosis
Read more: American researchers train AI to assess the mental state of goats
Australian cybersecurity geeks created a similar AI bot last year
They called it Apate, which is the name of the Greek goddess of deceit. Its development was made possible through extensive research at Macquarie University’s Cyber Security Hub in Sydney.
Telecom companies in the country will redirect fraudulent calls to Apate AI bots. Unlike Daisy, the features (voice, etc.) of these bots vary. A vast data pool is collected from multiple calls.
A spokesperson from the Australian government’s National Anti-Scam Centre says that scammers are known to frequently impersonate legitimate organizations to acquire sensitive information from unsuspecting victims.
“Criminals create a sense of urgency in an attempt to get the targeted victims to act quickly,” the spokesperson told The Guardian. “They often try to convince victims to share personal or bank account details, or provide remote access to their computers.”
The nation’s Office of National Intelligence helped fund development of Apate.
Phone scammers duped more than two billion people around the globe in 2023. Over 70 million scam calls are made on a daily basis.
rowan@mugglehead.com
