A phone company developed an AI 'granny' to beat scammers at their own game

The British mobile phone company O2 has released a new product called Daisy, a cat-loving, chatty AI "grandma" designed to interact with scammers and keep them from targeting real people.

In a promotional video featuring former Love Island contestant Amy Hart, Daisy introduces herself with a playful warning: “Hi scammers, I’m your worst nightmare.”

The video shows Daisy talking about her cat Fluffy while pretending to be confused by the scammers' instructions, frustrating the con artists in the process.

“Don’t you think that what you are doing is wrong and it is actually bothering people?” one scammer asks in exasperation.

But time doesn’t matter to Daisy. “While you are talking to me, they cannot scam you. Look, dear, I don’t care about time at all,” she replies calmly.

O2, the company behind the AI granny, revealed that the technology can keep scammers occupied for up to 40 minutes per phone call. Daisy was developed with the help of YouTuber and software engineer Jim Browning, whose channel dedicated to scam investigations has 4.4 million subscribers.

To make scammers call Daisy, O2 engaged in a practice called number seeding, which involves placing Daisy’s number on lists frequently used by scammers to find potential victims.

The AI granny project has a dual objective: preventing real people from being scammed and raising awareness about the dangers of suspicious phone calls.

“We are determined to do our part in fighting scammers, and that means investing in solutions such as firewalls to filter out scam texts, AI to identify spam calls, and much more for our customers,” said Murray Mackenzie, O2's fraud director.

“But importantly, Daisy is also a reminder that just because someone on the other end of the phone sounds convincing, it doesn’t mean they are who you think they are.”