Meet Daisy — the AI-generated granny helping to trap scammers

Daisy the AI grandmother — (Image credit: O2/Daisy AI)

Scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, turning to artificial intelligence to better con their victims out of money. This includes using deepfakes to present themselves as someone else. Now, AI is being used in the fight back with telecom company O2 deploying an AI-powered granny in the battle.

Named Daisy, it is a new AI tool with the voice of a grandmother designed to talk with fraudsters and "waste as much of their time as possible". Basically, she rambles on about anything and everything to keep them away from real people.

How does Daisy work?

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Daisy was built by the team at O2 using a custom-trained large language model with a 'character personality layer' to produce personalized responses.

It listens to the caller, transcribes it into text, sends that the LLM which generates the response and sends it back to the caller using text-to-speech. This is similar to the way Google Gemini Live works or the earlier version of ChatGPT Voice.

If you've ever had a conversation with Gemini Live or Meta AI Voice the experience will be fairly similar. It happens in real time with no noticeable delay.

The goal of the project is to keep the scammer on the phone for as long as possible by engaging them in a lifelike, but meandering conversation. This is done without any input from humans other than the responses from the scammer.

A video shared by O2 of Daisy in action suggests the scammers very quickly become frustrated and angry at the way it responds. This includes giving out fake bank account information and personal details.

Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud at Virgin Media O2, explained that Daisy is "turning the tables on scammers — outsmarting and outmaneuvering them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line."

He recommends anyone in the UK worried about fraud to forward any call or text they suspect of being from a scammer to 7726 for free so it can be investigated.

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Ryan Morrison, a stalwart in the realm of tech journalism, possesses a sterling track record that spans over two decades, though he'd much rather let his insightful articles on AI and technology speak for him than engage in this self-aggrandising exercise. As the former AI Editor for Tom's Guide, Ryan wields his vast industry experience with a mix of scepticism and enthusiasm, unpacking the complexities of AI in a way that could almost make you forget about the impending robot takeover.
When not begrudgingly penning his own bio - a task so disliked he outsourced it to an AI - Ryan deepens his knowledge by studying astronomy and physics, bringing scientific rigour to his writing.