from the hold-on-I've-got-to-take-the-pie-out-of-the-oven dept.
I know many Soylentils are sick of AI, but I found this to be clever and actually doing something useful:
The Best Use of AI Ever: A 'Grandma' Built To Waste Telescammers' Time
https://decrypt.co/291711/the-best-use-of-ai-ever-a-grandma-built-to-waste-telescammers-time
British telecom giant O2 announced what could be the first deployment of conversational AI specifically designed to counter telephone fraud in the UK telecommunications sector.
The hero: a clueless grandma who endlessly and frustratingly digresses while idiot scammers attempt to hoodwink her out of money.
The system, dubbed "Daisy," uses AI models to snare fraudsters in meandering conversations lasting up to 40 minutes, potentially preventing millions in losses across the network's 24 million mobile customers. The tool operates autonomously around the clock, requiring no human intervention to maintain conversations with suspected scammers.
"Stop calling me dear, you stupid [expletive deleted]!" one exasperated tele-scammer shouted in a video O2 aired to show off its new tool.
"Got it, dear!" the kindly AI grandma replied.
Here's how it works. When a user receives a scam call, they forward the call to the number 7726, which had been used as a hotline to report fraud. From there, Daisy employs a custom large language model with a "personality layer" that generates real-time responses to the scammers.
The system transcribes incoming voice to text, processes it through the AI model so responses are context-relevant, and converts the text output back to speech, creating natural-sounding conversations that can include fictional personal details and bank information.
It's designed to exploit fraudsters' targeting of elderly victims by presenting as a chatty grandmother, complete with meandering stories about family and knitting.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Username on Saturday November 16, @07:25PM (3 children)
I wish I had one for those election calls and texts. That was annoying.
At some point I'd like one to go out and do interviews for me as well. My own personal agent trying their best to get me my perfect job.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Saturday November 16, @07:35PM
I would also like one for recruiters. "Tell me more about that $12/hr job on the other side of the country." "So clearly you've never read my resume, lets go over my entire resume line by line."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Sunday November 17, @03:36AM (1 child)
This is only going to last for as long as the scammers take to deploy their own AI on their side. At which point your phone will be permanently tied up with mindless conversations between two AIs talking past each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17, @07:00AM
So for maybe a few more years the fake granny AIs can be cheaper. Plus you might be able to do more caching and reuse, cutting costs more. After all many real grannies repeat themselves and forget stuff too AND these are often the same type of grannies that the scammers want to scam - the ones with dementia etc.
(Score: 5, Funny) by mcgrew on Saturday November 16, @07:44PM (3 children)
I'd bought a new modem, and back then hardware came with software. This modem had sophisticated voicemail; press 1 for this, press 2 for that...
I programmed it so pressing the # key during the menu made my phone ring. All of the numbers led to wild goose chases where the diligent would be pressing numbers for an hour, at which case would report that that employee had terminated and hang up. Of course, I let people I actually didn't mind hearing from know the code.
That was back in the wired phone days. This new hack sounds much funnier!
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 5, Funny) by Unixnut on Saturday November 16, @08:24PM
Nice, I remember the modem my parents used had a audio-out and mic-in jack. I always imagined hooking it up to the sound card and writing software to do something similar, but I was nowhere near competent enough at the time (I was just a kid). When I was old enough to know how to write such a program modems (and wired lines) were all gone. So its always nice to hear about those who had the knowledge and ability to do such cool stuff back then :-)
It does, although eventually telescammers will cotton on to this scheme. IMO the fact O2 are now publishing this as a PR stunt makes me think the scammers already know not to bother when they hear "Daisy".
Saying that, I am sure O2 can make different sounding voices and personalities to make it harder for the scammers to be sure if they are talking to AI or not. I place my vote for "irritable foul-mouthed lout" as the next personality, just to be the complement to the dear grandma.
At the moment I suspect the human telescammers are cheaper than an AI model, but if enough of their time is wasted eventually the scamming companies will adopt AI as well. So we can look forward to one AI calling another AI and having a phone argument on our behalf, my isn't the future grand!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Saturday November 16, @09:16PM
I did something similar to what you did. Back then it was my teenage years. Long ago, my family had AOL, the only ISP available at the time. I was online so much that the rest of the family was always angry about missing calls. Eventually DSL came to the area, and my parents not only took that, but bought a new family PC, a Compaq Presario with Windows ME. Giving me the old IBM PC to use all my own. Few months later I bought my own motherboard and made my own pc, since I was strong independent man living in his parents basement, pirated the latest and greatest windows xp for it as well. By then we were getting a lot of spam calls since I was no longer blocking the phone lines. I installed Asterisks, which google says still exists, onto the old IBM PC, and had a nice message saying something like, "you've reached the ____ family, to ring our phone press 1, to leave a message press 2," which got rid of most of the annoyance. I didn't do any secret things, since someone might find the family dog, call the number and need a way to let us know.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday November 17, @02:34AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Saturday November 16, @08:32PM (9 children)
...my recorded greeting was "Domino's Pizza, hold please..."
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday November 16, @09:03PM
We had Shakin' Stevens singing This Ole House.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday November 16, @11:19PM (6 children)
I had an uncle who would answer the phone "City morgue!"
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Sunday November 17, @01:04AM
The modern equivalent is texting "I'm pregnant" to a random number, then blocking that number.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17, @09:42PM (4 children)
> I had an uncle who would answer the phone "City morgue!"
When I heard someone answer like this, it was a bit longer,
City morgue! You kill'em, we chill 'em...
(Score: 2) by cereal_burpist on Monday November 18, @03:04AM (3 children)
The version I used to hear was "County morgue. You bag 'em, we tag 'em!"
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday November 18, @09:12AM
My uncle said "You stab'em, well slab'em!"
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 18, @04:54PM (1 child)
The genuine problem I see here is what assistance can they provide if the numerous corpses in my basement have not been bagged?
Also, do you use eco friendly bags?
No amount of therapy can make an irrational number be rational.
(Score: 2) by cereal_burpist on Tuesday November 19, @03:01AM
You need to buy
more shovelsa backhoe or other excavating equipment.The Soylent County morgue uses designer bags from Marc Ecko!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Sunday November 17, @02:38AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zzarko on Saturday November 16, @08:40PM (1 child)
"Orion, a key technology partner for several carriers, has deployed AI-driven solutions focusing on predictive modeling and real-time call analysis to identify and label suspicious calls before they reach consumers."
So, did I understood that correctly, they are monitoring and recording all calls?
C64 BASIC: 1 a=rnd(-52028):fori=1to8:a=rnd(1):next:fori=1to5:?chr$(rnd(1)*26+65);:next
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday November 17, @02:41AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday November 16, @11:42PM (1 child)
While funny unless AI grandma can call in a drone strike or actually trace them and notify the police of their location this is at most going to be a bit of time sink.
As in regard to that they would eventually catch on to grandma Daisy I'm sure that isn't an issue. After all if they have one "working" AI grandma they could probably quite easily just have a library of such digital seniors and with some minor voice modulation and story banks they could probably keep them busy. Still it's not a solution to the problem but until it becomes a prioritized crime then I guess this is, sadly, the best we can hope for. Time wasting.
But until banks that process their transactions and the phone companies that supply them with communications feel like they should do something, or are forced to, then I guess as noted this is the best we can hope for.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday November 17, @06:38AM
And that might be enough. The economics of the scams depend on reaching enough victims to pay for the call center and its employees.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Nuke on Saturday November 16, @11:47PM (3 children)
An AI version of "Lenny". Lenny is recordings of a senile old geezer giving frustrating replies to scammers. Has a number of set long-winded responses triggered by the caller's voice. Lots of sessions on YouTube, like :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM [youtube.com]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Deep Blue on Sunday November 17, @12:22AM (1 child)
That's an AI? It has like 10 sentenses it just recycles. My friend tried to trick me back in the 90's with a better chat bot.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Sunday November 17, @10:45AM
I didn't say it was AI, it's not - that was my point. Recycling sentences is exactly what I said it did.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday November 17, @01:43AM
Here's another one...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=telecrapper+2000 [duckduckgo.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Funny) by SomeGuy on Sunday November 17, @04:13AM (1 child)
Well, if that is the best use of AI, then we don't have much to worry about AI now, do we?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Sunday November 17, @10:25AM
You might not, but if true it'll take a big chunk of fun and feeling theat I am doing something useful out of my life if I just forward the scammers to AI rather than talking to them myself.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday November 17, @10:27PM (1 child)
Did anyone notice that snippet?
So they replaced their former hotline that dealt with tele-fraud with an entertainment AI?
Is there a new hotline that takes actual complaints? Do they actually do something about such complaints?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday November 17, @10:46PM
Actually, that has never been a manned number. In the past, once the call had ended, you simply sent the caller info there by text automatically by pressing the Report Spam button on the 'phone display. The advantage now is that the number is received by the people responsible for managing spam while it is still live and, if Granny, does her job, the spammer stays on the line for some time. This enables technicians to do a lot more tracing of the call and identify those responsible.
In France it has been reasonably successful. Very often by the time I receive a spam call it is already identified and displayed on my screen as Spam. I can simply block the call. So why don't they just block it immediately? Because the severity of the legal punishment is related to how many calls the spammer makes. They are automatically counting them while the case against the company is being prepared. This I assume also makes it act as a deterrent - does the spammer continue if he knows he has been caught by Granny, or is each subsequent call being counted?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by KritonK on Monday November 18, @06:33AM
"If you say the word 'yes' within the next 5 minutes, then this will be taken as confirmation that you have ordered a hundred gross self-sealing stem bolts from us. Got it?"
"Yes, dear."