Meet the new AI grandmother that can scam the scammers on your behalf

UK phone service provider Virgin Media O2 created an AI grandmother to waste scammers’ time.

“Scambaiting” is when the target of a phone or online scam realizes what’s happening and plays along. The goal is to waste as much of the scammer’s time as possible.

The process is often hilarious and has given rise to a successful genre of online content in which users post their successful attempts to bait scammers.

The process, however, can be time-consuming. So a UK company called Virgin Media O2 is offering a solution: an AI grandmother named Daisy.

In a video demonstration last week, the company showed how someone could deploy the AI chatbot to waste a scammer’s time on their behalf.

“This state-of-the-art AI Granny’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 while highlighting the need for consumers to stay vigilant as the UK faces a fraud epidemic,” the company said.

The problem is worldwide. Almost 1 in 3 Americans have been the victim of a scam in the past year, with an average loss of $1,600 a person, according to a study from IPX, a financial analysis firm. According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported more than $10 billion in losses last year from online scams.

Virgin Media O2 says it decided to create Daisy after conducting research that showed that 71% of Brits wanted to retaliate against scammers but that most of them didn’t want to spend the time to do so.

So the company partnered with one of the most popular scambaiters on YouTube, Jim Browning, to train the AI chatbot. Browning is known for pretending to be a clueless victim long enough to frustrate scammers. Browning has more than 4.3 million subscribers.

Virgin Media O2 told B-17 in a statement that Daisy “combines various AI models which work together to listen and respond to fraudulent calls instantaneously and is so lifelike it has successfully kept numerous fraudsters on calls for 40 minutes at a time.”

“Daisy is turning the tables on scammers — outsmarting and outmaneuvering them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line,” director of fraud at Virgin Media O2, Murray Mackenzie, said. “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.”