Meet Daisy, the AI 'granny' chatbot that wastes the time of phone scammers

A new artificial intelligence (AI) "granny" named Daisy has been designed to chat with phone scammers so customers don’t have to. 

Virgin Media O2, the UK telecommunications company behind Daisy the AI chatbot, said it trained her using real scam-baiter content so that she’s "indistinguishable from a real person," and can "fool scammers into thinking they’ve found a perfect target". 

Daisy is a combination of various AI models that work together to listen and respond to scam callers, Virgin Media O2 said. 

While on the phone with the fraudsters, Daisy tells them meandering stories about her family, talks about knitting, and provides false information about her bank details. 

She has been able to keep fraudsters on the phone for 40 minutes at a time so far, the telco company that created her said in a statement. 

"The newest member of our fraud-prevention team, Daisy, is turning the tables on scammers – outsmarting and outmanoeuvring them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line," said Murray Mackenzie, director of fraud at Virgin Media O2. 

A February study from BDO, a financial services firm, found that the total value of fraud in the UK reached £2.3 billion (€2.69 billion) in 2023, a 104 per cent increase from 2022.

Another study from the University of Portsmouth found that two-thirds of their respondents over 75 reported at least one fraud attempt in the past six months. 

Seventy-one per cent of the British public want to bait scammers, but most of these callers don’t want to waste their time doing it, a study published by Virgin Media O2 says. 

Daisy, however, has "all the time in the world," the AI says in a video for her launch.