O2’s AI Granny Outsmarts Scam Callers with Knitting Tales

Telecommunications firm O2 has created a “human-like AI granny” to answer scam calls with the aim of keeping fraudsters on the phone and away from O2 customers.

The new member of the O2 fraud prevention team, dubbed Daisy, has been created using a range of AI technologies and is able to interact with scammers in real time without input from the creators.

Daisy combines various AI models working together to listen and respond to fraudulent calls instantaneously.

Through meandering stories of her family, talking at length about her passion for knitting and providing fraudsters with false personal information, including made-up bank details, Daisy has successfully kept numerous fraudsters on calls for 40 minutes at a time.

Plague of Scam Phone Calls

O2 said that more than two thirds of Brits (67%) are concerned about being the target of fraud and one in five (22%) is experiencing a fraud attempt every single week.

Last year alone, Virgin Media O2, owner of the O2 brand, intercepted and blocked over £250m ($260m) in suspected fraudulent transactions.

A 2023 study of 2000 British citizens by fraud prevention service Cifas found that scam attempts through phone channels were reported by over half (56%) of survey participants.

“AI granny Daisy is an imaginative first step in tackling the daily plague of scam phone calls. Such calls, and other mobile frauds such as romance cons, recorded messages and phishing texts are now so commonplace that they rarely raise an eyebrow,” commented Julian Hayes, Partner, BCL Solicitors.

However, Hayes noted that there are some limitations to the AI-granny approach, suggesting that you would need a “legion of them” to really make a dent in the mobile fraud ecosphere.

Seeking Revenge

According to new research from O2, 7 in 10 (71%) of Brits would like to get their own back against scammers that have tried to trick them or their loved ones.

However, not wanting to waste their own time ranked as the top reason why the public wouldn’t bait scammers themselves (53%).

This, in part, led to the creation of scam-baiter Daisy as part of Virgin Media O2’s ongoing ‘Swerve the Scammers’ campaign.  

The firm said it has invested heavily in the fight against ground and alongside Daisy has also deployed new caller identification services free to all mobile customers to help protect them.

The operator also blocks millions of fraudulent texts and calls from reaching customers phones every month.

Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud at Virgin Media O2, said: “We’re committed to playing our part in stopping the scammers, investing in everything from firewall technology to block out scam texts to AI-powered spam call detection to keep our customers safe.”

She urged anyone based in the UK to forward dodgy calls and texts to 7726 for free.