"I have all the time in the world." With this sweet tone, Daisy, apparently a British elderly woman, addresses a phone scammer trying to obtain her banking information. Daisy is not a real person, she is an artificial intelligence trained by O2, the Telefónica operator in the UK, to fight against this issue.
The fight against fake calls and messages has been ongoing for years with little success from companies and governments. For every line closed, two more open, an epidemic that has led governments like the Spanish are preparing legislation to try to tackle the problem at its root
Now, the British operator has opted for a radically different strategy. Since scammers cannot be eliminated, the goal is to keep them as occupied as possible, and what better way than with one of their favorite targets: the elderly.
The operator has combined various language models to create an assistant that transcribes calls in real time and generates personalized responses. According to tests conducted by the company, the assistant has managed to entertain a scammer for up to 40 minutes.
To achieve this, it invents false banking details or, directly, episodes from its life and hobbies that force the criminals to invest time in listening to stories about how well she knits or the latest antics of her cat before being able to execute what they believe is a scam. This practice is known in English as scambaiting and to combat it, the operator has asked its customers to report fraudulent SMS and phone calls to their lines so that experts can handle these situations.
In the last year alone, the company blocked 89 million text messages seeking to scam recipients, and according to a company study, 69% of Britons have been targeted by these fraudulent practices. In Spain, one in three fraud cases handled by Incibe through the 017 line is related to these practices.
With no clear and proven way to end these behaviors, Daisy sounds like an alternative that will at least force these scammers to change their phone numbers more often while cultivating patience.