An A.I. granny is phone scammers’ worst nightmare – The New York Times
Daisy, with her befuddlement about technology and eagerness to engage, is meant to come across, at least initially, as the perfect target. Her developers said they leaned into expectations, often using their own grandmothers for inspiration. “I drew a lot from my gran. She always went on about the birds in her garden,” said Ben Hopkins, who also worked on the VCCP project. Instead of using a voice actor to train Daisy, the team opted to use one of its colleagues’ grandmothers, who came in for some tea and recorded hours of dialogue.
A prolific scambaiter based in Northern Ireland who posts on YouTube under the name Jim Browning worked with O2 and VCCP in developing Daisy, pumping her full of techniques to keep scammers on the phone. Among them: Go on lots of tangents on topics like hobbies and your family, and feign technological ineptitude. In one instance, three phone scammers teamed up on a call that lasted nearly an hour, trying to get Daisy to type “www.” into a web browser.
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