Meet Daisy Harris: The Chatty A.I. Granny Battling Scammers
The fight against phone scammers has taken a surprisingly friendly turn. Daisy Harris, an AI-powered virtual granny, is here to tackle scam calls, not by force, but by doing what she does best—talking. With her love of tea, biscuits, garden birds, and sometimes baffling questions about the internet, she has been created to frustrate fraudsters by tying them up in endless, meandering conversations.
Although the endless battle against phone scams continues to escalate, with tens of millions of fraudulent calls circulating daily and over £1 trillion stolen globally from victims, innovations like Daisy represent fresh attempts to stem the tide. Built by the British phone company O2 in partnership with an advertising agency, Daisy takes an unusual approach—wasting scammers’ time to protect real victims.
But can an AI-powered granny, no matter how chatty, really make a difference in the global scamming epidemic?
Meet Daisy Harris, the Scam-Busting Granny
Daisy Harris, the embodiment of the sweet, chatty English grandmother, was built with a rather sinister purpose—for scammers, at least. She chats endlessly, often rambling about birds in her garden or her knitting projects, and appears to be a typical easy target.
Her creators took inspiration directly from their own grandmothers. Ben Hopkins, one of her developers, shares, “I drew a lot from my gran. She always went on about the birds in her garden.” Even her voice recording wasn’t left to chance; instead, a colleague’s grandmother was brought in to record hours of authentic dialogue, adding warmth and authenticity to the persona.
By design, Daisy plays into the stereotype of someone fraudsters might label an ideal victim—kind, eager to help, and easily flustered by technology. Her “innocence,” however, is her greatest weapon. Equipped with AI speech capabilities, she drags conversations into time-wasting tangents. She can talk about her cat, Fluffy, or ask frazzled scammers about their biscuit preferences while feigning confusion about typing something as basic as “www.” into a browser.
How Daisy Trips Up Scammers
It isn’t just the randomness of Daisy’s approach that stalls fraudsters. A prolific “scambaiter” from Northern Ireland, known online as Jim Browning, collaborated with Daisy’s team to teach her human-level techniques for frustrating scammers. These strategies include rambling about hobbies, faking misunderstanding, and exploiting scammers’ assumptions of technical ineptitude, ensuring even experienced fraudsters find it challenging to push through their scripts.
During one remarkable call, three scammers worked together for almost an hour as Daisy continuously misunderstood how to open a web browser. Despite their efforts, her seemingly innocent questions and tangents spun their frustration levels to the brink.
Unlike flesh-and-blood scambaiters who tirelessly work to expose fraud, Daisy’s advantage lies in her untiring ability to engage fraudsters 24/7. After all, scammers can’t take breathers when Daisy never sleeps.
Scamming on the Rise
The proliferation of scam calls around the world has reached staggering heights. Phone security company Hiya reported tens of millions of scam calls per day globally last year. Meanwhile, an international consortium combating fraud highlighted that scammers net upwards of £1 trillion annually by duping victims into surrendering sensitive information.
The rise of the internet has only made fraud more organised, scalable, and far-reaching. Unfortunately, older adults disproportionately bear the brunt of this surge. A survey in the UK revealed that 40% of individuals aged 75 and older receive scam calls frequently—some as often as daily.
O2 designed Daisy not simply to disrupt, but as an experiment to test AI’s potential in striking back against this relentless wave of fraud.
AI’s Limitations in Fighting Fraud
Although Daisy’s time-wasting conversations with fraudsters can reduce their success rate, experts argue that this alone is insufficient to deal with the wider scamming ecosystem. Elisabeth Carter, an associate professor of criminology and forensic linguist at Kingston University, noted that Daisy’s impact on fraudulent operations, though helpful, remains largely symbolic.
“Although it does disrupt operations on a practical level, it doesn’t stop fraud more broadly in any meaningful sense,” said Dr Carter.
She and other fraud experts caution against individuals trying to imitate scambaiting at home. Although hanging up may not be as satisfying as wasting a scammer’s time, it is ultimately safer and more effective to simply report the incident through the appropriate channels.
A Promise and a Challenge
The story of Daisy Harris speaks volumes about the potential of AI technology to combat crime in innovative ways, even if its applications remain somewhat limited. An AI granny asking endless cheeky questions may only serve as a small speed bump to scammers amidst a sea of fraudulent activity.
For now, the scam-busting granny serves as both a clever symbol of resistance and a technological tool that might one day contribute to more comprehensive solutions. And for the scammers stuck trying to explain what a double-click means for an extra 90 minutes, it’s clear that Daisy Harris is not someone to be underestimated.
Source
Explore more entrepreneurial insights and success stories at Inspirepreneur, your go-to magazine for business innovation and leadership.
