This granny could well become a scammer’s nightmare…because she’s actually an AI. Daisy, an artificial intelligence created to imitate the voice and reactions of a grandmother, can be used to trap con artists over the phone. The so-called “grazers call to extract money by pretending to be someone else… and end up chatting for hours with an unflappable – and terribly chatty – old lady. The aim: to keep the scammers busy, so as to reduce the number of victims.

Behind this mischievous idea is Virgin Media O2, a British telephone operator. “Daisy is indistinguishable from a real person, and encourages scammers to think they’ve found a perfect target to better beat them at their own game.”proclaimed the operator in a press release on November 14, on the occasion of the AI’s public unveiling. In a video presentation, Daisy can be seen demonstrating her talents: she speaks slowly in a monotone, pretends not to understand the information requested by a scammer and even offers to show him photos of her cat. The swindler becomes impatient, on edge: “It’s been almost an hour!” And Daisy replies, innocently: “Really? How time flies!” According to Virgin Media O2, the virtual grandmother can keep the “grazer” on the phone for almost forty minutes.

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An epidemic of online scams

To bait scammers, Virgin Media O2 added Daisy’s number to lists of numbers used by con artists. The artificial intelligence program used is a combination of models created in collaboration with Jim Browning, a videographer specializing in tracking down online scammers. “Daisy combines several AI models that work together to listen to the caller and transcribe their voice into text. Appropriate responses are then generated using a large language model.”explains the operator in its press release. The company has also teamed up with Amy Hart, a well-known British reality TV star and former scam victim herself, to advertise its new AI. In the video presentation, the young woman urges Britons to send scammer numbers to 7726, so that they are automatically redirected to Daisy. The slogan is revealing, to say the least: “Ruin a crook’s day!”

These online scams are becoming increasingly common in the UK. More than two-thirds of Britons (67%) say they are afraid of becoming a victim, while a fifth (22%) report being the subject of a fraud attempt at least once a week. And France is not spared: according to figures from the French Ministry of the Interior, scams have risen from 250,900 victims in 2016 to 411,700 victims in 2023, an average increase of 7.3% per year. A way for “grazers” to take advantage of the ageing population combined with the increasing complexity of technology, which leaves many older people helpless in the face of online scams.