Featured Image Credit: Dobrila Vignjevic / Getty
One phone network has come up with a rather intriguing tactic to battle scam callers, employing the assistance of an AI 'granny' to waste their time in a hilarious clip.
While many extortionists have moved over to the internet world with an abundance of increasingly dangerous cybersecurity threats, there still remain those dedicated to the phone lines and willing to prey on the vulnerable.
There's nothing worse than being bombarded with spam calls either, as they can keep calling and calling with no end in sight - but thankfully one UK-based phone network has utilized the power of artificial intelligence to combat even the most persistent of callers.
Meet Daisy, an entirely AI persona posing as a roughly 78-year-old woman who is hell-bent on wasting the time of nefarious scammers over the phone with idle chit chat.
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The tech, as reported by the Guardian, has been trained on real life scam calls and engineered as a way to show people the dangers that extortionists can pose over the phone.
Thankfully O2 have uploaded an example call where we see 'Daisy' in action, and it's hilarious how frustrated the scammer gets when simply trying to get the AI to do what he wants.
In between requests from the scammer Daisy mentions "looking up knitting patterns" alongside the "occasional recipe for scones," adding that she's just "doing her best" despite being "78-years-young."
The scammer quickly becomes frustrated at her seeming inability to comply, asking: "Ok, you think that this is a joke right? You're trying to kid with me."
Daisy's repeated confusion still isn't enough to deter them though, as the call continues minutes on end, even to the point where the scammer insists: "Excuse me, ma'am, I am not interested in your recipes, OK?"
It's indicated that Daisy was able to extend the length of fraudster calls by up to 40 minutes, dramatically increasing the amount of time they'd have to contact other customers. However, it doesn't look like it'll become a wide-scale operation.
Simon Valcarel, Virgin Media O2's marketing director, told the Guardian that this particular implementation of AI was aimed at raising awareness of scams as opposed to being used as a tool. This is likely due to the fact that some of the scammers were able to guess that they were talking to an AI bot, which would become even clearer over time.
Many online can definitely see the funny side of things though, with one comment underneath the video indicating that "Daisy passed the Turing test."
Another added that this was "finally a truly useful implementation of AI. Daisy seemed to hit all the right notes, the frustration on the other end if palpable."
Much of the response is in reference to how believable Daisy's voice and conversational skills actually are though, and its reminiscent of Google's new AI podcast tech that creates a conversation between two individuals that don't exist.
One user has hypothesized about a dystopian albeit hilarious scenario where both the scammer and the person on the other end could both be AI, and it would be fascinating to find out which side would relent first.
