In BriefPosted:9:11 PM PST November 15, 2024AI Granny is happy to talk with phone scammers all dayOn Thursday, the UKs largest mobile network operator, O2, introduced a chatbot designed to frustrate phone scammers. Called dAIsy, it mimics an older woman with all kinds of time to chat about knitting, her cat Fluffy with the aim of keeping fraudsters endlessly engaged as they try obtaining her (fake) bank details.A press release about O2s AI Granny says it combines various AI models that transcribe the callers voice into text before generating a response through a custom large language model, then feeding it through a text-to-speech model to produce a voice answer. The AI was trained in part by Jim Browning, a scambait expert with a huge YouTube following.Its fun to see in practice. (O2 says the audio in the video below is real.) If it makes a dent, all the better. Last year, the FBI reported that people over age 60 were swindled out of $3.4 billion via telephone scams, up from $3.1 billion in 2022. With generative AI taking off and voice impersonation with it those numbers are poised to balloon.Topics