Daisy may seem like the typical grandmother: a fan of knitting, family anecdotes, and chat about her cat, Fluffy. She's technologically challenged and always ready to shoot the breeze. But scratch beneath the surface, and you'll find a tech-savvy force to be reckoned with, equipped with some clever tricks.
Daisy is, in fact, a conversational AI chatbot developed by British mobile phone company O2 to combat fraud. Her purpose? To trick phone scammers into believing they are speaking to a real person, wasting their time and keeping them away from actual victims.
Daisy's mission "is to talk with fraudsters and waste as much of their time as possible with human-like rambling chat to keep them away from real people." The AI granny's methods have been remarkably effective, with "numerous fraudsters on calls for 40 minutes at a time," according to the company's announcement.
Murray Mackenzie, Virgin Media O2's director of fraud, commented, "With scammers operating fulltime call centers specifically to target Brits, we're urging everyone to remain vigilant."
Daisy's persona has been created as a photorealistic AI-generated woman with gray hair, glasses, and pearls, talking on a pink landline phone.
Her creation was the response to research showing that people are often unwilling to bait scammers because they don't want to waste their time.
During countless scam calls, Daisy has regaled fraudsters with winding family stories, talked endlessly about her love for knitting, and even provided false personal details, including fabricated bank information.
In the unveiling video, Daisy's chat so thoroughly exasperates one scammer that he can be heard shouting, "It's nearly been an hour, for the love of (inaudible expletive)." Replies the calm and friendly Daisy, "Gosh, how time flies."
Another fraudster retorts, "I think your profession is bothering people," to which Daisy casually replies, "I'm just trying to have a little chat."
Daisy uses a custom large language model that allows her to hold real-time conversations with scammers. Although she does not intercept calls, she has several phone numbers that O2 has circulated online to attract fraudsters.
The company claims Daisy has already "wasted hundreds and hundreds of hours of scammers' time."
The AI was created in collaboration with the London advertising agency VCCP, which modeled Daisy's voice after a staff member's grandmother to make her more convincing.
To train Daisy's AI, O2 enlisted the help of Jim Browning, a YouTube scambaiter with over 4.3 million subscribers.
Last year, Virgin Media O2, the wider telecommunications group, blocked over £250 million ($315 million) in suspected fraudulent transactions—an average of one every two minutes.
A global loss of over $1 trillion due to scams was reported last year, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. The FBI has reported a record $12.5 billion in losses from online scams in 2023.
The U.S. federal government has called the AI technology "transformative," stating that it has helped the Treasury Department recover $1 billion in check fraud during the financial year that ended on Sept. 30.
In the face of growing threats from online scams, Daisy's innovation provides a critical tool in the fight against fraud.
