On Thursday, the UK's largest mobile network operator, O2, unveiled a chatbot designed to frustrate phone fraudsters. Called “dAIsy,” it mimics an older woman who has loads of time to talk – about knitting, her cat Fluffy – with the aim of keeping scammers endlessly busy as they struggle to get their (fake) bank details.
A Press release O2's “AI Granny” says it combines “various AI models” that convert the caller's voice into text before generating a response via a custom large language model after which passing it through a text-to-speech Forward model to generate a voice response. The AI was partially trained by Jim Browninga “scambait” expert with an enormous YouTube following.
It's fun to see it in practice. (O2 says the audio within the video below is real.) If it makes a dent, all the higher. Last yr, the FBI reported that individuals over the age of 60 were defrauded of $3.4 billion in phone scams, up from $3.1 billion in 2022. With the rise of generative AI – and the voice imitation that comes with it these numbers proceed to rise.
