O2, the UK’s largest mobile network operator, has introduced a chatbot named “dAIsy” to counter phone scammers. This chatbot pretends to be an older woman who enjoys talking about knitting and her cat Fluffy, with the intention of keeping scammers engaged and preventing them from obtaining fake bank details.
According to a press release from O2, the “AI Granny” utilizes various AI models to transcribe the caller’s voice, generate a response through a custom language model, and convert it into a voice response using a text-to-speech model. The AI was trained by Jim Browning, a popular “scambait” expert on YouTube.
Seeing the AI Granny in action is entertaining (O2 confirms that the audio in the video is real) and could potentially make a positive impact. Telephone scams targeting individuals over 60 resulted in losses of $3.4 billion in 2021, up from $3.1 billion in 2020. As generative AI technology advances, along with voice impersonation techniques, these numbers are expected to increase.
