AI grandma fights back against scammers
Meet Daisy – an AI-generated grandma created by British phone company Virgin Media O2 as the ultimate scam buster. Daisy’s sole purpose is to talk to scammers all day so real people don’t have to.
Daisy made her debut on Nov. 14 and has already had more than 1,000 conversations with scammers so far, the longest lasting around 40 minutes, frustrating them with her tech-illiteracy and wasting their time by telling irrelevant stories about her grandchildren.
“The newest member of our fraud-prevention team, Daisy, is turning the tables on scammers – outsmarting and outmaneuvering them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line,” Murray Mackenzie, director of fraud at Virgin Media O2, said in a statement.
an average of 2.9 billion unwanted or spam calls a month. That’s about eight spam calls per user, per month.
Although there is no American version of Daisy, many U.S. phone companies have call screening software that can identify a likely scam or robocall.
On Nov. 13, Google announced a new A.I. feature for its Pixel phone that will go one step further and listen in to calls you make. Google AI will sound an alarm or vibrate if it detects conversation patterns commonly associated with scams, like a caller urgently requesting money transfers or asking for account login information or your bank details.
As phone companies and scammers continue to innovate with AI for their own purposes, the best thing consumers can do is stay vigilant.
“In terms of tips and tricks, whether you’re shopping online, reviewing your emails, or receiving an out-of-the-blue phone call, it’s important to always remain vigilant,” a spokesperson for O2 told CBS. “We never call customers and ask for their full passwords, one-time passcodes or bank details over the phone, so any call like this is guaranteed to be fraud. Always check links you receive and if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
contributed to this report.
Source: cbsnews.com