On Thursday, O2, the UK’s largest cell community operator, launched a chatbot designed to frustrate cellphone scammers. The service, referred to as dAIsy, imitates an aged lady who spends her time chatting about issues like knitting and her cat Fluffy, permitting scammers to steal her (faux) checking account. The goal is to maintain you endlessly concerned in your makes an attempt to acquire data.
a press release O2’s AI Granny makes use of quite a lot of AI that transcribes a caller’s voice into textual content, generates a response by a customized large-scale language mannequin, and feeds it right into a text-to-speech mannequin to generate an audio response. It states that it combines “fashions”. A few of the AI trainings embrace: jim browningan knowledgeable on “scammers” with an enormous following on YouTube.
It is enjoyable to truly see it. (O2 claims the audio within the video beneath is genuine.) If it makes a dent, even higher. Final yr, the FBI reported that individuals 60 and older have been defrauded of $3.4 billion in cellphone scams, up from $3.1 billion in 2022. With the unfold of generative AI and the ensuing voice spoofing, that quantity is prone to swell.

