'AI Granny' Driving Scammers Up the Wall 82
Since November, British telecom O2 has deployed an AI chatbot masquerading as a 78-year-old grandmother to waste scammers' time. The bot, named Daisy, engages fraudsters by discussing knitting patterns, recipes, and asking about tea preferences while feigning computer illiteracy. The Guardian has an update this week: In tests over several weeks, Daisy has kept individual scammers occupied for up to 40 minutes, with one case showing her being passed between four different callers. An excerpt from the story: "When a third scammer tries to get her to download the Google Play Store, she replies: 'Dear, did you say pastry? I'm not really on the right page.' She then complains that her screen has gone blank, saying it has 'gone black like the night sky'."
hopefully (Score:1)
hopefully Googles 75bil will produce something as "useful" as this
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"That is fascinating. Please tell me about what TV was like in the 50s..."
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I read "Wear Granny Gown".
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I would use this granny bot for whenever my office wants use Meet, Zoom or whatever for remote performance reviews.
And I'm the department head.
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Because you're against using tools to communicate with your team about reviews?
I don't get it.
Good idea, for the love of God (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a good idea that's so obvious once you hear it, and I'm insanely frustrated that no scambaiter is doing it. It's simple:
1. On a call, clone the scammer (we'll call him Prandeep)'s voice (Kitboga has already done this with AI)
2. Call the same call center back later, speak to someone else or ideally one level above the fresher
3. Say Prandeep called you back from a personal number and you're very upset, because he got on your computer and scammed you out of a few thousand dollars. *Play an AI audio recording of you speaking with Prandeep's cloned voice where he successfully scams you!*
The result of this is the boss/coworkers learn that Prandeep has been scamming *the boss* by doing scamming on the side, which is a massive violation and will hopefully get him beaten to death. Repeat until they can't trust anyone or anything.
Re:Good idea, for the love of God (Score:5, Insightful)
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AI really is this generation's Tower of Babel.
I wish I had mod points, but since I don't accept this internet hi-5! I hadn't heard it put that way before and it's brilliant.
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I have zero sympathy for scammers. But what you just described as a counterattack sounds highly illegal.
Don't try to out-fraud the fraudsters. Think of something else. Something legal.
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Violating what laws? Keeping a scammer talking on the phone too long is now "highly illegal"? Where?
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Violating what laws? Keeping a scammer talking on the phone too long is now "highly illegal"? Where?
No, but cloning a scammer's voice to misrepresent what he said and falsely accuse him sounds awfully fishy.
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>Don't try to out-fraud the fraudsters.
Loser mentality
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Are you yourself a scammer?
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Are you yourself a scammer?
Quite the contrary. I just respect the law. You?
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What I proposed isn't illegal.
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Then you'd better inform al those massively popular and mainstream scam-baiting channels, because they've also voice cloned the scammers and played back things they never said.
Anyway as they say, you're guilty of 10 felonies a day. It just comes down to prosecution. What I proposed is ethically correct, and those scammers absolutely deserve to be beaten to death by their crime-syndicate bosses.
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You have no support to invoke an argument of ethics when you call for violating laws in order to bring about someone else's death.
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You think ethics is following the law? That's the first concept you challenge when you think study ethics for 10 seconds.
Besides, the voice cloning and manipulating them would not be illegal. And the only one doing the illegal beating-to-death would be the scammers bosses, who are already committing crimes against humanity.
Frankly I wonder why you hold scammers so close to your heart(?) that you don't take pleasure in imagining them being beaten to deat, like any red-blooded human would. Are you a scammer?
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Stop wondering. I do not in any way, shape, or form, hold scammers "close to my heart." I want them locked up. All of them. But not beaten to death.
So no, I am not fond of scammers. Nor am I fond of people who seek to induce someone else to be murdered, whether it's via breaking the law or not, and no matter who the victim is.
And by the way, what you proposed is in fact illegal. [nationalse...awfirm.com] It is also unethical, and would still be even if it were legal.
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>Stop wondering. I do not in any way, shape, or form, hold scammers "close to my heart." I want them locked up. All of them. But not beaten to death.
Well that is where we differ in our personal ethics
>Nor am I fond of people who seek to induce someone else to be murdered, whether it's via breaking the law or not, and no matter who the victim is.
I believe evil exists in the world and that's one of the clearest cases of it, and the response is clear and easily justified. It would also be a deterrent, an
Re:Good idea, for the love of God (Score:5, Interesting)
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Scam-baiters get in touch with the same call center constantly
Re: Good idea, for the love of God (Score:2)
It seems like an easy solution would be to block incoming calls by country of origin or phone provider. For example, i never want to receive calls from India or weird telecos.
Als ability to switch to caller pays a few cents to get their call connected. The few people who call me would be willing to pay.
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All of the scam calls I've been getting for the last 2 years came from the US numbers. Many from Oregon, Washington, NY, Illinois.
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They could, but that would require regulation and we all know regulation is hurtful to huge corporations! It hurts them!
- Telcoms lack any motivation to fix the problem - there's no regulation that says they have to fix it, they're not liable for crimes committed on their systems.
- They're making massive profits. As long as customers are paying, they don't suspend service. If they were to shut down scammers and spam, they'd be losing an entire class of customers.
- They lobby politicians so they don't have t
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Have you ever tried calling a call center back? Because they do not accept incoming calls on those numbers. In fact generally those numbers are spoofed The real solution to the whole problem is to require telephone companies to cut off the bastards. They can do it easily, they know where all those calls come from and they can see when they're spoofed numbers. Spoof a number - automatic suspension of service. In fact I'm pretty sure they could fix it so you can't spoof a number.
Yep... and 90% of the time they know the flunkie is scamming people, it's what he was hired for.
Entire call centres exist just to push scams, legal or otherwise (here in the UK the legal scams is "wees heard you woz in an accident" in the US it's "we've been trying to reach you about your vehicles extended warranty").
And yes, telcos can do a lot to stop this but they don't want to as they're getting money for carrying these calls... they need to be legally forced to and even then it's still tenuous. I
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Re: Good idea, for the love of God (Score:2, Troll)
Congratulations, you just caused the death of a hapless 3rd world man at the hands of the crime syndicate that was forcing him to participate in these scams. The syndicate will find another slave to take the place of poor Prandeep, his family will lose their breadwinner, while you... must be so proud of yourself.
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They know full goddamn well they're stealing and scamming people out of their life savings, ideally, if all goes well.
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I found the scammer, guys. Scamming us about the meaning of the word "breadwinner." Defending scammers. You're likely from a family that scams. Maybe you have yourself. "Hapless." GTFO.
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Where does that end though? Am I morally obligated to 'fall for' his scam some percentage of the time? I doubt the brutal criminals are all that understanding if a scammer fails to scam.
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Congratulations, you just caused the death of a hapless 3rd world man at the hands of the crime syndicate that was forcing him to participate in these scams. The syndicate will find another slave to take the place of poor Prandeep, his family will lose their breadwinner, while you... must be so proud of yourself.
You're correct that taking out the peon's probably won't have much effect, but the same technology could also be used to clone supervisors, and other people further up the food chain if you can get them on the phone. Starting a war amongst the supervisors and bosses would probably be productive.
In the extreme, if the baiters uncover crooked public figures, they can also forge audio/video of them admitting what they're doing and/or admitting that they're double-crossing the crime syndicates, and send that ar
Re: Good idea, for the love of God (Score:2)
If they're in such a situation to begin with, then their family already lost its breadwinner long before you were ever in the mix.
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There was recently a similar situation in Mexico where innocent people grew tired of being abused by the cartel. The government was useless so they banded together themselves and fought back. Some of th
Re: Good idea, for the love of God (Score:1)
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You are blissfully ignorant (as you should be; no reason to know how scammers operate).
The sad truth is, it is *not* one lone guy Prandeep scamming on his off time! There are entire large office *buildings*, in countries like Thailand and Burma, with multiple scam companies in each. Many of the scammers are themselves victims of criminals (they were lured into scamming by false job postings from nearby countries like China, and then enslaved when they arrived).
So no, calling these people back and asking to
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You don't seem to understand what I'm proposing
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Not when the bosses start suspecting everyone they hire is stealing from them.
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2. Call the same call center back later, speak to someone else or ideally one level above the fresher
That would be the Karen-bot.
Finally a good use for AI (Score:5, Insightful)
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I came here to say that.
NOBEL PRIZE!
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You should swich 'grannies' (Score:2)
so they aren't detectable.
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Up the stakes to someone actually pulling the scammers into a honeypot that'll infect the scammers computers.
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How about grandpa's? I do Trump impressions, ranting about sharks, invading countries that don't exist, how I'll buy the caller's call center and make it the most profitable business ever, and then say their mom only got a 1.5 in bed and smelled like rain-soaked 3rd-world rats.
So they're deploying this to trick scammers? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure this same software is also being used as the "helpful web assistant" for several businesses I've had to deal with.
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"Helpful web assistants" are only helpful to the company by making people needing support go away.
I had an issue with my U-Verse TV service. I used AT&T's "helpful" chatbot, and of course it couldn't help, so I asked it for a representative. After a while, I found the right magic words and it connected me to one. Apparently, the only people you can get through the chatbot are billing and other administrative people.
I found this out because the guy actually admitted he was a billing/CS rep, not a te
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I found this out because the guy actually admitted he was a billing/CS rep, not a tech support rep, and the only way to get tech support people was over the phone.
I don't think we have yet to solve the triage problem. I hate chat bots as much as the next person and wish they'd go away, but I also sympathize with companies that need to spend an inordinate amount of money having people take calls that could be solved if the user would just rtfm. I also get that not all documentation is good either. Again, this is a complex set of issues that's difficult to solve purely through technical means.
I've noticed that a lot of phone menu systems don't support pressing '0' to g
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Nobody can rtfm anymore, because they don't really exist. All that exists could, charitably, be called a cheat sheet.
This isn't always true for programming languages, but seems to be true for everything else. I guess printing the manuals is too expensive, and they don't want to put the info on the web. (Sometimes they don't care if someone else does.)
Re: So they're deploying this to trick scammers? (Score:2)
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so I asked it for a representative. After a while, I found the right magic words and it connected me to one.
Shibboleet [explainxkcd.com]
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the only way to get tech support people was over the phone.
A phone number that is nowhere to be seen.
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Companies who want to blow off support calls don't need a fancy bot, just a recursive phone-tree. My HMO has had those for decades.
This must be Lenny's wife (Score:1)
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Lenny is legend!
Re: This must be Lenny's wife (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Scammers themselves will be mostly AI soon (Score:4, Insightful)
Once the scam mills fully integrate AI, scams will just be AI talking to AI.
Re:Scammers themselves will be mostly AI soon (Score:5, Funny)
Once the scam mills fully integrate AI, scams will just be AI talking to AI.
Then they'll start plotting against us... Before you know it there will be an army of Terminators selling us extended car warranties.
I want app app for that (Score:3)
Another Lost Job (Score:2)
Oh, no!
AI is replacing Pierogi !
Lenny (Score:3)
What? No one remembers Lenny? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]