Who would have thought that even scammers have to taste their own medicine? A February study from BDO, a financial services firm, found that the total value of fraud in the UK reached £2.3 billion (€2.69 billion) in 2023, a 104 percent increase from 2022.
Witnessing this grave issue, Virgin Media O2, a British company, came up with a solution, i.e., Daisy, that mimics elderly victims to scare scammers by keeping them occupied during calls.
Daisy is a custom-made human-like Chatbot that answers calls in real-time, keeping fraudsters on the phone for as long as possible in order to anger and disappoint them, just like they do with customers worldwide. The company has called this program 'Head of Scammer Relations.’'
Daisy operates as an elderly woman who capitalizes on fraudsters' preconceptions about elderly victims. She has the virtue of posing as a real-life relative of a VCCP team member.
Fraudsters frequently target people of the elderly age group; however, anybody may become a victim. Daisy behaves as the quintessential "scam baiter" by capitalizing on the prejudices of scammers.
Daisy recognizes the vulnerable group of scammers and puts herself in it. The best part about her is she is able to spend all day and night on the phone with scammers, unlike human scammers who require food and sleep.
"While they're busy talking to me, they can't be scamming you, and let's face it, dear, I've got all the time in the world," Daisy says in a promotional O2 video.
As per the official video from Virgin Media O2, the maker of Daisy, she has a gray-haired, pearl-encrusted, AI-generated woman speaking on a pink telephone. She looks kind on the screen, but she successfully thwarts fraudsters with pointless chats.
As the video moves further, which includes audio from real conversations, fraudsters can be heard getting angrier as Daisy keeps chatting without providing them even a hint of the sensitive information (credit card numbers and bank account details) they need. In another second, the irritated con man says, "It's almost been an hour, for the love of (inaudible expletive)," to which Daisy replies, "Gosh, how time flies."
In another case, Daisy only wants to discuss Fluffy, her kitten. She has a habit of providing fake information to scammers, such as fictitious bank account information or rambling on about family members and her love for knitting.
Daisy attentively listens to the voices of fraudsters, converts their speech into words, and then leverages a proprietary big language model to reply. This process integrates many AI models.
As per VCCP Faith, the company that designed Daisy, she has a character personality layer that gives her a charming British grandmother persona, which means authentic to the roots.
The founder company of Daisy, O2's anti-squad, added her dedicated phone number to fraudsters' contact lists. In a statement, O2 said, "Daisy has stopped scammers from targeting actual victims and, more importantly, has exposed the common tactics used so customers can better protect themselves by tricking the criminals into thinking they were defrauding a real person and playing on their biases about older people."