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posted by martyb on Friday November 20 2015, @08:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the turing-test-contestant? dept.

Robert Platt Bell writes at his blog "Living Stingy" about Lenny, a library of videos which play recordings to telemarketers trying to sell services (or scams). Lenny picks up calls and answers them with pre-recorded audio clips from a doddering Australian man, sometimes keeping telemarketers on the phone for over 20 minutes. "Lenny confounds and confuses, but sounds totally real," writes Bell. "Some telemarketers talk to him for nearly a half-hour, before they figure out that he's either a recording - or senile."

According to developer Mango, Lenny is a program that uses voice recognition techniques to detect when a telemarketer is through speaking. When Lenny doesn't hear anything, he says his next prompt. If the telemarketer doesn't speak, or speaks too quietly, Lenny will ask them to speak up. This makes him sound more "real". After the 16th prompt, Lenny starts over. The current "record" of sorts is a pair of telemarketers who were kept occupied by Lenny for over 38 minutes. Want to talk to Lenny, or transfer a telemarketer to him? Here's how.

But who is the real Lenny? According to Internet chatter he's an actor in Brisbane, Australia — though clearly of English origin — who made his recordings for a company that wanted to respond in kind to time-wasting callers. About 2013, however, the original Lenny stopped working, so Mango and other tech-types decided to recreate him based on the published recordings. "The dishonest telemarketers are the ones that Lenny is really intended for," explains Mango.


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  • (Score: 2) by quadrox on Friday November 20 2015, @09:45AM

    by quadrox (315) on Friday November 20 2015, @09:45AM (#265747)

    So what - you can't make an agreement with a bot, and it's easy to prove that the bot isn't you, so who cares?

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by zugedneb on Friday November 20 2015, @10:20AM

    by zugedneb (4556) on Friday November 20 2015, @10:20AM (#265752)

    well, think about the future...
    what if it will use the users voice?
    like, vocaloid, say?
    over a noisy line, identification might become uncertain.
    you might have to prove in court that it was a bot, and not a verbal agreement.

    the second thing is your tone...
    mature + sensible tone =/= wise, oké?

    be paranoid, be vigilant, be a troll

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
    • (Score: 2) by ticho on Friday November 20 2015, @10:51AM

      by ticho (89) on Friday November 20 2015, @10:51AM (#265760) Homepage Journal

      Still, for important things, a verbal agreement does not even have the value of the paper it's not written on. (credit goes to T. Pratchett)

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by art guerrilla on Friday November 20 2015, @12:17PM

        by art guerrilla (3082) on Friday November 20 2015, @12:17PM (#265768)

        i thought that was a yogi-ism: Oral contracts aren't worth the paper they are written on, is how i remember it...

        • (Score: 2) by ticho on Friday November 20 2015, @02:59PM

          by ticho (89) on Friday November 20 2015, @02:59PM (#265831) Homepage Journal

          It's possible. I am just crediting the source I got it from - Moving Pictures book, by Pratchett.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @10:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @10:52PM (#265997)

            A variant is often (mis)attributed to Samuel Goldwyn [wikiquote.org].

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @10:59PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @10:59PM (#265999)

              And in fact, looking over the Wikiquote for Yogi Berra [wikiquote.org]...

              A remark once attributed to Sam Goldwyn will be attributed to Yogi Berra. (Jimmy Carron)

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @06:13AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @06:13AM (#266458)

                As Einstein said "I never said most of the things I said." ;).

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Friday November 20 2015, @05:08PM

    by Bot (3902) on Friday November 20 2015, @05:08PM (#265873) Journal

    > So what - you can't make an agreement with a bot...

    O RLY?

    I think that your mom is a honest person, do you agree?

    --
    Account abandoned.