Daisy the 'AI granny' speaks to scammer: 'I'm a bit lost now'

O2 has introduced “AI granny” Daisy for a short period to show what could be done with artificial intelligence to counter the scourge of scammers, who have become so ubiquitous.
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Daisy is not a real grandmother but an AI bot created by computer scientists to combat fraud. Her task is simply to waste the time of the people who are trying to scam her. Using a mixture of ambivalence, confusion about how computers work and an eagerness to reminisce about her younger days, the “78 years young” Daisy draws sighs and snapping from fraudsters on the other end of the line
‘Dear, did you say pastry?’: meet the ‘AI granny’ driving scammers up the wall ► www.theguardia...
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#ai #artificialintelligence #scammers #computers #daisy #aiscammers #aiscam #aigranny

[@guardiannews]

‘Dear, did you say pastry?’: meet the ‘AI granny’ driving scammers up the wall ► www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/04/ai-granny-scammers-phone-fraud

[@TonyAntyna-z3r]

Yeah it's all fun and games until THEY introduce the highly professional AI scammer.

[@ĐốVui-x2b]

I love AI 🤣

[@zakelwe]

When I worked at Viglen PCs on tech support back in the day we had real life pastry grannies to try and help. Having said that people were happy to get the case open and move a jumper to change the IRQ setting etc etc.

[@alhypo]

Soon, those scammers will be replaced by AI. Then we can have AI scammers talking with AI grannies. 😂

[@ĐốVui-x2b]

🤣 🤣 🤣

[@algomi9280]

Scamception

[@indiankid8601]

😂

[@SendMeLocationBrother]

Scammers are w 😊

[@killmenotthem]

Dead scammer theory

[@j.503]

Daisy passed the Turing test.

[@Manu-Official]

She's only pretending she didn't....

[@tinkeringtim7999]

Not sure its a fair test; the scammers themselves don't pass the turing test.

[@nextinstitute7824]

😂😂😂😂

[@Lenny.262]

One of these Indians called me once and said his name was Bob Blue. I instantly laughed hard and loud on the phone and made him hang up lol 😂

[@b.i.g.g.u.s]

The scammers are not human, tho.

[@cajac]

Finally, a truly useful implementation of AI. Daisy seem to hit all the right notes, the frustration on the other end is palpable...

[@obinator9065]

They need to add some noise tho. The audio is to clear.

[@joaxx4627]

@@obinator9065 The recording is from the AI's side. The audio will sound less clear from the scammer's side due to the phone line.

[@cloned81]

"Finally", because everything else is useless. That's silly

[@AX-sq5vm]

💯⭐

[@citizen3000]

@@cloned81 It's ok, they don't know what they're talking about.

[@OElitecorp]

The f**king cheek for him to be impatient with an (who he believes to be) elderly lady who he is actively trying to take money from.

[@zero11010]

Well, he’s gotta steal her money and move on to the next call. They’re on a tight schedule of thieving!

[@laupernut]

They don't care, they just want to steal the money and move on, no soul.

[@bootsnake69420]

Evil

[@kangarupisejs]

And for some reason the parliament thought it would be a splendid idea to invite millions of these leeches in their country.

[@memes_gbc674]

the more time you waste the less time scammers have to move onto other victims

[@eightchickens]

Perfect. That's what AI for, to waste scammer's time and NOT stealing money.

[@denks7849]

how does AI "steal money"?

[@Masterpouya]

​@@denks7849Depending on people opponions it could be : - Huge unecessary investment - Helping many criminals/scammers/hackers to improve their method to steal money from legit people and compagny. - Manipulating the finances (even Blackrock uses one powerful AI for trading & such) etc.

[@Wandering_Weeb]

​@@denks7849by many ways but in the end it's human abusing AI to harm other human

[@Psychx_]

I don't want to think about the horrendous electricity bill though,

[@TonyAntyna-z3r]

You have to be a very specific kind of naive not to see how this is about to spectacularly misfire.

[@blaximperia]

It’s annoying how these scammers have the gall to even be rude.

[@lagunabxo]

Right?!

[@roidroid]

That's part of the con-job. Get the mark on the back foot, if they're in a rush & feel apologetic/self-conscious they'll be less likely to question what's happening.

[@PinkMonkeyBird]

No it's not lol Indians are just like that. It's not 4D chess ​@@roidroid

[@agnelomascarenhas8990]

It's a business, there are objectives to meet and granny is so annoying!

[@hiddenguy67]

ahat losrrs

[@sajjeel123]

DO NOT REDEEM!!!!!

[@cvspvr]

JUUUST WAIT A MOMENT! JUSS WAITAMOMENT!

[@hostile_user]

Nooooooo000000

[@ennis_w]

WHY YOU REDEEMIT!

[@MrBox009]

WHY ARE YOU REDEEMING?!

[@tomsixsix]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOO "Should I redeem?" NOOOOOOOO NOO NO NOOOO "OK I'm redeeming... oh, it worked!" WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAAM, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WHY DID YOU DO THAT!!

[@piggugudu1327]

Amazing how real Daisy sounds, and how patiently and innocently she draws out the conversation 😂 “oh dear you sound a bit frustrated” was the icing on the cake 😂

[@Nooticus]

Its pretty impressive yes, but there are still quite a lot of giveaways, for example she said ‘Like’ in the middle of a sentence which is only something young people do

[@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx]

@@Nooticus Given that my friends used it when I was a kid in the 1970s, that's not true any more.

[@Nooticus]

@ what?!? Nobody who I know who is my parents age uses it like that

[@TellyMan200]

clear LLMs and training. open ai can learn leassons from Virgn O2

[@laupernut]

Scones dear, icing on the scones.

[@maciejtrybilo]

Can we have it in Philomena Cunk's voice?

[@Budanevey]

Her mate Paul pretended to be in a neck brace for six months to get money from a car insurance company...

[@umayr2935]

Yes, vote for this one

[@riikkaalanen3429]

Yess! 😆😆😆

[@fallguyjames]

Cunk's voice sounds too young. These scammers are going for the elderly.

[@fisk-zh1uz]

Rumor has it Sam Ctrlman said you can have it sound like a 78 year old Scarlett Johansson.

[@PBurns-ng3gw]

This is actually brilliant. AI often struggles when it comes to picking up on conversational cues, hearing words correctly, and avoiding unrelated tangents, all failures that can easily be misinterpreted as "Senioritis" if the end user thinks they're talking to an elderly person. Throw in a slight language barrier, and it's perfect.

[@alberteinsteinthejew]

Imagine if the scammer was also AI 😂😂😂

[@maxresdefault_]

Just imagine scammers wasting thousands on scam bots that spend all day talking to granny bots

[@wormrocket]

@@maxresdefault_ it’s not too unbelievable

[@genealogyxie]

That's what I was about to post in the comments too! 😅

[@cjcottell]

This sounds like the start of a Black Mirror where the two bots are competing against each other to become more real until they become sentient and fall in love.

[@siddharthakc97]

AI ( Actually Indian(

[@LovenArtiste]

This is one of the most convincing AI voices I’ve heard. Wow. Edit: Some have implied this AI isn’t very convincing at all. So can you please point me in the direction of the superior ones? Haha

[@John-ks6si]

Because you're comparing it to the Stephen Fry and Anthony Hopkins facsimiles 😁

[@YesOkayButWhy]

Sounds a bit Windows 98 to me.

[@LuciannaG123]

It is going to be very problematic soon. Don't trust your own ears and eyes.

[@theinternetsavedmylife]

They probably used an AI voice replicator to clone some granny's voice 😂😂

[@VictoriaVoltia]

Yean, many of the are really convincing. Try to guess how many of us commenter replying to you is an AI?

[@MarrisaL-bs2ch]

"Just blackness, like the night sky. I hope it comes back soon, what should I do?" Yo that beat is dope

[@chaosen3]

That did make me chuckle 🤣

[@whyamibored727]

poor ai has no computer to look at, it assumes it should, so everything is black. what a sad, sad existence for our poor electrical buddies.

[@DaraM73]

…and the Oscar goes to Daisy for its performance in Scone in 60 seconds

[@returnoftheredeye]

Daisy, the pastry-maker with a pacemaker.

[@cloo29]

@@returnoftheredeye🤣

[@PirateOfTheNorth]

I could listen to her troll scammers all day. It’s comedy gold.

[@davidduran2984]

Id watch a youtuve channel with that content

[@david1731048]

Finally a wholesome, useful and moral use for AI!

[@2CSST2]

It's crazy how the majority of people have bought into the doomer mainstream ignorant take on AI. This is FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR from the only useful and moral use of AI. Are you people for real?

[@1918w-j4r]

Is letter and number detection useless or voice input for keyboard? Thats all AI bud

[@deadspeedv]

Low key just passed the turing test. What a time to be alive

[@asiamies9153]

Turing test has been passed over 10 years ago

[@Jose04537]

It's scarily convincing.

[@Censorshift]

To whom 🤣

[@Kokorocodon]

The scammers

[@Statsjk]

Are you a scammer 😂

[@IntentionalSpellingMistakes]

It's going to get a LOT more convincing

[@rebirth4119]

And keep in mind too that they're hearing this through a low quality phone call so any imperfections in the AI voice can be hidden pretty easily 😂. But yeah there was a moment I forgot that this is an AI.

[@RichardHannay]

Wow, this AI is insanely genuine.

[@somthingz3928]

(Artificial Intelligence) AI vs AI (An Indian)

[@ryandanngetich2524]

😂😂😂

[@무현노-h3e]

Nigerians too

[@trader548]

😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

[@TellyMan200]

😆😆

[@TheRayanKhan]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@woobeforethesun]

This is a fun application for an LLM, but we should also keep in mind that scammers also have access to the same technologies to create their own AI scammers. It's the start of the AI wars. AI Scammers vs AI Grannies.

[@AlejandraXio]

Soon we will have these AI avatars in an app to answer the scammers. I would totally pay for that. I get multiple scam calls a day.

[@Javiera_Random]

Sounds like clone wars. Wait ...

[@yukiko_5051]

Lol those Indians only have cheap laptop and cheap phones, i doubt they could make a sophisticated AI

[@clara5924]

Great usage of AI. playstore and pastry confusion sounds so convincing.

[@ThePropStation]

This brought me more joy then I expected!

[@9mmomen]

Daisy should be the one that achieves singularity.

[@fractal_gate]

Yes, humanity would be blessed with many scones!

[@Jwellsuhhuh]

Finally. An actual ethical use case for ai

[@user-sl5hu1ju8s]

'oh dear, you sound a bit frustrated' 😂 what an ending!

[@08murphyuk]

Unfortunately, this is why I hangup everytime someone with an Indian accent phones me trying to sell things. Some might be honest, but phone scammers really have given that country a bad name.

[@AndorranStairway]

As a security professional, this is the advice I want to give the elderly but am not allowed to. 100% of the calls I’ve received from unknown people with Indian accents have been scammers

[@parthibanspace]

A correction. Not any Indian, particularly Hindi speaking North Indians. We South Indians, non Hindi speakers, experience this everyday.

[@mark99k]

@@parthibanspace This is potentially very useful info. Can you elaborate, esp. on how the accents differ?

[@skycloud4802]

​@@AndorranStairway probably can't say, because it's perceived as racism.

[@Oatmeal-Savage]

None are honest. As soon as some dude with an Indian accent says their name is "Richard" or "Dave", you gotta laugh.

[@colincarr2052]

What a crazy planet we’re on

[@sahilkhurana_]

People like him ruin the reputation of an entire nation, what a stain

[@ilikepigeons6101]

Ong

[@felixchallis8038]

I don't think it's just the scammers that give India a bad reputation 🤣

[@redgefleming1535]

The whole country is already a bad reputation, only a small ones is lifting its reputatikn

[@iamdmc]

This is beautiful! Waste the time of the people who are a waste of air!

[@FlorianWendelborn]

Well done, pretty accurate impression of a technologically-incompetent grandma

[@pimisi]

Most upright AI granny. “Just blackness like the night sky” 😅

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for Daisy's performance! 😂

[@morganbryan8045]

I often do the same thing for about 10 minutes ("I am just turning on my machine, oh it says I need to reboot, hang on . . .") and then when I am bored I go "do you think I was born yesterday? While we have been chatting I have passed your number to a service that tracks your location"

[@whatilearnttoday5295]

That's why they keep calling you. Simply stop answering.

[@bentos117]

soon the word will spread between scammers: "if you hear her talking about pastry, just hang up immediately, it is a bot"... which can be used as a deterrent by anyone, just talk about pastry - if they guy stops the call, he was a scammer

[@Nedankinde93]

The AI isn't scripted, it has the advantage of being able to respond on-the-fly, so to speak. The scammer, on the other hand, IS reading from a script.

[@marcos4325]

If a real person knows about the pastry code, they probably already know about how to detect a scam

[@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx]

You do know that we humans have fingers to press the red End Call button, right?

[@citizen3000]

I'm not sure why you'd assume that the bot will always mention pastry.

[@Mark-Haddow]

AI is capable of more unique responses than any human. It has a larger vocabulary, and its "voice" can be changed billions of times, including accents or language

[@BirksyChillz]

😂🤣 - "oh the occasional recipe for scones" As a British person, I can surely agree, indeed.

[@user-245er4ud]

Since phone companies are able to put spam likely in caller ID, they should divert those spam calls to be answered by this AI.

[@lyrimetacurl0]

Scammers spoofed my number so someone reported me as spam, then when I called my sister it said "suspected spam" so in retaliation I found the guy who asked me if I was spam and reported his number as spam as well.

[@whyamibored727]

​@@lyrimetacurl0 did you call the guy up and let him know that anyone can spoof a number? many people seem to not realise this, or assume that certain number types cannot be changed. i first noticed the number spoofing feature on a phone i owned back in 2014, but not many people dive deep into their settings, let alone other technological things

[@icedlemonss]

O2 does that

[@darrennew8211]

And the problem is someone is billing people for these calls. So they *know* what the number is. If a call comes in from India on overseas lines and claims it's a number in Ohio, it should automatically be blocked.

[@G_Silent]

I’ve been waiting to hear our best granny talking to scammers since I saw the original video about the technology. Thank you for sharing this with us!

[@getsturdy]

That the voice „confused“ playstore and paistry is actually insane

[@Abamaine]

My prediction is many scammer globaly now training AI to be a scammer . . . tech is always a double sword edge

[@juliahello6673]

The AI scammer and the AI scammer can have long conversations and that’s fine with me.

[@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx]

@@juliahello6673 Given the amount of energy AI uses, that's not necessarily an improvement. Jevons' Paradox applies to AI and in particular to DeepSeek.

[@Abamaine]

@@juliahello6673 assuming you can spot if its scam to begin with

[@slayermate07]

Hopefully without the horrible Indian accent anymore. Daisy’s accent and mannerism were actually a blessing to listen to, maybe get one with an American or Aussie lad on the other line and it would be an entertaining listen

[@piouswhale]

AI scams are already real. They imitate family members. Right now AI scams are pretty targeted but that could change.

[@quarryspanish]

imagine being a godlike AI only to be created to annoy spam callers

[@viandengalacticspaceyards5135]

I'd say "doing god's work'.

[@sayedameer]

scammy: P L A Y Store... Ai granny: did you say pastry hahaha loving it.

[@Budanevey]

They should train the AI on Terry Tibbs: _"Talk to me!"_

[@matthenley3886]

Surely the call centre guy, you want free ring dings?

[@Budanevey]

@matthenley3886 it is free apart from the one-off free payment of 182 pounds and the continuings of 42 payments of 18.70...

[@georginathompson3788]

Or George Adugadugwengo. Scammer vs Scammer. 😂

[@georginathompson3788]

@@matthenley3886internet service providings, providings the faster broadbandings. 😂

[@d3r4g45]

Who invented her should get a nobel prize. 😂

[@SrgRespawn]

2:53 let me just squint at it 😂

[@HurricanePuppies]

You know the expression “Things human say that AI could never understand?” Take that off the list. The snark was brilliant!

[@lesleyscott938]

Love how it really winds up the caller 😂

[@mjbonnin]

Most brilliant use of AI I’ve seen yet.

[@dalhaanu]

He had the AUDACITY to say, "There are some people trying to steal your money and we are here to protect it". Absolutely disgusting!

[@Babarky]

She thought Play Store was pastry.... Then later asked him if he had any nice pastries in his area. This is a great AI Granny 😂❤

[@josh2011miller80]

This feels like an appropriately gentle way to deal with scammers.

[@m_martha_e]

You might be onto something. I’ve heard some scammers could be victims of human trafficking and forced to do this.

[@marthinus.x]

Bless whoever put this together 🖤✨

[@BojanKvakic-j6d]

it's really crazy how nobody is talking about money's untold mysteries

[@modalmixture]

This is amazing, until you imagine the scammers using the same technology to automate their end of the scam and make themselves sound like friendly native speakers

[@John-ks6si]

I think we're some way off AI that can think on its feet to that extent. Remember, Daisy's job is specifically to frustrate would-be scammers so it's not really any more impressive than chat bots from the 2000s 😁

[@NYCSubwayWorker]

This is insane! Whichever researchers worked on this are geniuses! They need to roll this out asap

[@striker44]

Every scammer is a lonely lowlife. Now they have AI granny for some companionship.

[@sick_system]

Funny how the AI has more humanity than the human

[@dangermouse2837]

Being in a job that deals with elderly British people every single day, the voice and behaviour is incredibly accurate 😂

[@PRIMEVAL543]

O2 did this and I think they deserve the recognition for it!

[@stphngrnr]

I really want AI Granny's scone recipe now.

[@rn2511]

“Let me just squint at it” killed me 🤣

[@MultiGeorge101]

Technically, we're listening to two people fight on a battlefield, that's quite scary

[@sigma_z]

This is PERFECT, Please we need more of granny AI :)

[@nljie]

This is the best AI usecase that I've ever seen

[@Patowtow]

This is absolutely mind-blowing. It's literally undistinguishable from real speech 😱

[@solariss452]

Ah yes, the reassuring voice of the 'Microsoft' engineer. We've all heard it. Sadly.

[@Niramay-ff2uy]

This is golden... the best use of AI ever

[@decorativeed8032]

Excellent. Now the inevitable AI scammers will have some AI marks to waste a small proportion of their time alongside the real ones.

[@AdrianCeroni]

One of the few applications of AI I can support. Man, those scammers have zero patience.

[@peterswires8439]

This is scary: computers have finally learned how to take the pi**.

[@st.michaelthearchangel7774]

THIS IS AWESOME!!! Thank you for making this.

[@chocolatebar6785]

they really made an AI which passes the turing test just to mess with scammers

[@beepbeep_moo]

do not redeem

[@Free.Britney]

😂😂

[@RH11THM]

Is that a Kitboga reference I see? "DO NOT REDEEÊËĒM IT!"

[@beepbeep_moo]

@@RH11THM lol yes

[@MrAshC]

This is the best gift I've ever stumbled upon on my birthday: No longer do you need to give up your own time and energy to waste that of a scammer's!

[@asiamies9153]

This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end. The scammers will get their own AI

[@inderdhami2001]

This is great! They tested their AI with Indian scammers! Impressed how it can understand and respond to the accent.

[@mehere8038]

it does it better than the reverse! Pretty sure the scones pronunciation totally threw the scammer

[@cvspvr]

the ai can be trained on indian accents to the point that it understands indian accents better than american accents

[@Tom-x7f3m]

What do you mean? You just have to train it to recognize Indian phonetics (just how you train it to recognize American phonetics) ... Every language uses a different set of phonetics. It's not like some accent is real or better.

[@Tom-x7f3m]

Although some accents (set of phonetics) can be more efficient to speak a language than others. They (phonetics) evolve to accommodate and improve the efficiency of a language.

[@Sakazuki_Bepu]

That pastry is such a hillarious moment. Bro should just take the pastry recipe quit being scammer and start a bakery. Honest living is more respectable than large dirty money.

[@Kridez23]

😅 Not being racist but why are most scammers Indian

[@lazy_rock69]

generally from the third world having nothing else to do I guess.

[@tugful]

Reparation

[@R50_J0]

Because there weren’t enough Nigerians to do the job?

[@Blastfromthepastchannel]

A large number of English-speaking people with high youth unemployment are initially lured into thinking they're working in a legit IT company

[@jacktomo8475]

​@@tugful behave

[@mikedytham9996]

I could have a better conversation with Daisy than my mother in law! Daisy would make much more sense.

[@cfyves]

Hopefully... someday... the chat bot will keep scammers in some very long infinite loop

[@wormrocket]

or hopefully, someday, the population will all be the oldest gen z and scammers would have given up because they get clocked too easily.

[@DanksterPaws]

@wormrocketunlikely many gen z’ers still fall for scams. Just modernized ones, especially those in crypto and investing circles. Lots of scam victims and scammers in those fields dominated by Zs

[@PBurns-ng3gw]

That’s a hypothetical paradox known as a Grounded Vindaloop.

[@stephensteele2844]

I could listen to this all day

[@mrila-x3e]

i'm so disappointed of these call center reps! they should be patient to poor granma!

[@LostWaxProcess]

AI Granny is a million times more human than O2 customer services

[@GregLopesArt]

now we need a video of granny Daisy fighting against the algorithm

[@SimonStJohn]

Absolutely golden!🎉

[@mark99k]

The scammer is worse than most. Speaking so impatiently just makes people (even real grannies) tell him where to stick it. We need Daisy distributed far & wide.

[@attackman4458]

This can be used both ways guys 😬

[@viandengalacticspaceyards5135]

Then they may have a very, very long conversation.

[@HamzaNasry]

This is the best voice interaction AI, WHAT TTS AND SST ARE THEY USING?! Only ppl who tried to build voice assistants understand...

[@6th.replicant577]

Very amusing. And very scary.

[@sophie_katz]

this is actually amazing to waste the scammers' time

[@mass2048]

oh dear!

[@CatatonicImperfect]

bless

[@danielcooney1840]

This is great. Every time I get a spam call, I save the number to a blocked contact. When I get a spam call, is there a way to forward the call to the AI granny? I think the world becomes a better place when we waste these scammers time.

[@presbiteroo]

Scammer payback is more entertaining but not bad, not bad! xD

[@erhhsdhh2099]

Fantastic use of AI! Waste the scammers time 🙌 Ideally the scumbag should be in prison forever

[@Yoginhoo]

Keeping the stereotypes alive

[@Booyabeeba]

This is like every phone conversation with my mother when she has a technical problem.

[@导演文森吴]

I have been talking with a girl from another country for two years. The idea that nothing can proof that she is 100% real at this point is truly scary

[@iSwearToCod]

get her to snap u lad

[@John-ks6si]

If she says "oh bless" incongruently every thirty seconds, then stop sending her money via Remitly 😁

[@johnmartinez7440]

If only there was some way to do a video call. Alas!

[@asiamies9153]

@@iSwearToCod Doesn't prove anything

[@iSwearToCod]

@@asiamies9153 bc ur not smart lol

[@assai74]

I am waiting for the AI Scammer to meet AI Granny

[@Stickfigure414]

I LOOOOOVE this. I could listen to this all day.

[@GornubiusFlux]

I expected nothing other than big Raj doing the scam, this is their bread and butter

[@EuropeanEmpireEU]

They aren’t beating the allegations.

[@தமிழோன்]

Just like the British Raj, the proudest scammer in the world.

[@LaurieCoco-t8z]

Thank you for the much needed chuckles.