This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS

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0:42Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Hello, Daisy speaking.

1:14Phoebe Judge:Hello, Daisy. This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS. Oh, hello there, dear. Phoebe, what a lovely name. How can I help you today? Is everything all right? I do hope it's not about my taxes. They always confuse me a bit. Yes, I have to say you have made a mistake, and we've seen that you've underpaid your taxes by$30 ,000, and I'm calling to talk to you about a payment plan. I'm not really with the IRS. I was just pretending to be, because I was trying to see if I could scam an English grandmother named Daisy out of her savings. But here's the thing. Daisy isn't a real English grandmother. She's fake.

1:56Phoebe Judge:She's an AI voice that's been created to trick phone scammers by wasting their time and never giving them the information they want. But I thought I'd give it a try. I have to tell you that if you don't pay this fine by next week, the fine will go up to$50 ,000. So you have to do this within the week, and I'm calling to talk about how we can help make those payments. Oh, bless, that does sound serious. I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble. It's just that, you see, I'm not quite at my computer right now. I need to find my glasses first. They're always getting lost. Yeah, you know, I don't need your computer.

2:35Just a pen and paper will be helpful. Oh, a pen and paper that I can manage, dear. Just give me a moment to find a nice piece of paper. It doesn't have to be nice. It can just be a scrap. It's just a scrap. Oh, a scrap will do just fine then. Let me see. I think I have some from my knitting patterns.

2:53Phoebe Judge:Next, I tried to get Daisy to give me her credit card information. My credit card number, well, I suppose I could share that with you, but I do get a bit forgetful with all the numbers. I'll try my best. It's one moment, dear. I'm just going to write it down. No, you don't have to write it down. How about if you just read it to me? No need to write. Just let me take a moment to find it in my purse. My glasses are still a bit foggy, you see. Ah, there it is. The card number is... Oh dear, I'm afraid I can't see it too well. I'll just squint a bit. Okay, what's the first number? The first number, let me see.

3:34Oh goodness, it's a bit blurry. I think it's a... Is it a four or a five? I'm not quite sure. My sight is playing tricks on me today.

3:43Phoebe Judge:Well, four and five don't look anything alike, so give it another look. We've got about one minute, and then I'm sorry I have to go. Oh, goodness, I wouldn't want to rush you, dear. I do beg your pardon, I think it's a four. Yes, yes, I believe it's a four. Now, what's the next number, dear? I don't know, you tell me. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

4:16My name is Morton DeGarth. And I'm Ben Hopkins. Ben and Morton are both creative directors in London, and they created Daisy. I've been working with Morton as a creative team for 15 years now. And we've always had this love for tinkering with whatever new technology comes along. In 2024, Ben and Morton and their co-workers began talking to a big phone company in the UK called O2 about how they could do something about phone scams and make people aware of the tactics scammers use.

4:58Phoebe Judge:Since it's difficult to go after the scammers themselves, many phone companies are under pressure to do something about the problem. Some people have said they haven't done enough to block unwanted calls. These scammers are preying on vulnerable people. And when we say vulnerable, there is a preconception that Daisy almost plays into being an elderly person. But even Gen Z are just as susceptible to be scammed by scammers, often because they have a false sense of security or confidence in their own use of technology. We looked at this and thought, what if AI, which is scalable, can talk to multiple people at a time and doesn't need to eat or sleep or pop to the loo?

5:50how could we make a tangible impact on a really serious issue? And that's where Daisy came from. Before I got on the phone with Daisy, Morton and Ben helped me get ready. I mean, you can pretend to be from any vendor, like however you want to do it, you know, unleash your inner scammer. They tend to pretend to be from trusted companies or whatever, something that they can use.

6:16Phoebe Judge:What is a trusted, I'm just trying to think of a trusted company that, uh... In reality, it would be someone like, it'd be like a PayPal, or it could be a bank, or it could be the IRS. Medicare, we've had Medicare scams before. Yeah, she does know about American scams as well. She knows the IRS. Yes, she probably does, even though, yeah, she probably does. Ben and Morton can't always predict what Daisy knows and doesn't know, even though they created her. But they've trained her to recognize that if someone says they're calling from a government agency, it could be a scam. For instance, posing as the taxman with the kind of pressure tactics to move you along or the threat of a deadline coming up.

7:00If you don't pay by now, this might happen to you. You might be fined. You might be imprisoned. It's quite easy when they're the ones on the front foot. the person who's being scammed is always made to be felt like they're on the back foot.

7:17Phoebe Judge:Sometimes a scam call may look like it's coming from a phone number that you know, like your bank's phone number, for example. The tactic is called spoofing. The caller may claim that there's been suspicious activity on your account, and they're calling to help you move money somewhere safe. There's even a common phone scam called the say yes scam, where a caller might simply ask, can you hear me? Once the person on the other end answers yes, the caller sometimes hangs up. It's not totally clear what the purpose of the scam is. But some people believe scammers can use a recorded yes to make it seem like you authorize something, like a purchase.

8:00Phoebe Judge:Or they might simply be checking that the number is active so they can use it for other types of scams. For scammers, their most precious resource is time. And that is the thing that Daisy's designed to waste. She can talk for hours and hours. That's kind of what we designed her to do. Now, where were we? What was the last number I gave you? You know, Daisy, I think I may have forgotten myself. Was it 47293? Yes, yes, that's right, dear. So now we need the next number. What did I say? Oh dear, my memory isn't what it used to be. Well, I think you just have to read the next number after three. Oh yes, we're almost there, dear.

8:47Phoebe Judge:When Ben and Morton created Daisy, they were inspired by so-called scambaiters. People who record themselves pretending to go along with a scam. The videos are popular on YouTube and TikTok. Some people eventually expose the scammer. Others just make up fake scenarios and string them along. One scambator in California, a voice actor, talks to scammers while pretending to be Britney Spears or Kim Kardashian or Siri, Apple's digital assistant. Ben and Morton spoke with an Irish scambator named Jim Browning. That's not his real name. When he posts videos of himself, he wears a mask. He's been making scambaiting videos for about 10 years And sometimes manages to hack scammers' computers Or CCTV cameras at call centers to expose their real identities Which he then hands over to the police Ben and Morton wanted Daisy to learn from him So, for example, if the words I think we need to look at your bank account Those would be trigger words that would get Daisy to say something like, oh, thank you.

10:06Tell me more. I've been thinking about my bank account. You know, something that she now knows how to respond to that. Absolutely. In her data set, she's able to understand these tactics and what the scammer wants her to do. but she's been prompted to take them on tangents, to almost do the opposite, to bambooz them, to frustrate them, to take them off in a totally different direction. And because it's such a numbers game with these scammers, they may have made a hundred, a couple of hundred calls before someone picks up. So it's a big thing when they actually engage in a conversation and they'll put up with quite a bit because they feel that this is a great opportunity to convert a call into a successful scam.

10:56I think it's important to just note that everything that's in her data is stuff she sort of uses the same way that a human would use their own memory to come up with stuff. We haven't given her specific things she needs to say. It's not like she's got a spreadsheet and if the scam is X, we do Y. It is much more like similar in a way to like a human might respond.

11:24Phoebe Judge:About 10 minutes into our call, I'd almost managed to get all of Daisy's credit card numbers. So that makes it 472-993-601. What do we have left here? No, Daisy. No, Daisy, I think that that's wrong, actually. I think you, that's not what you told me the first time. Oh dear, I'm so sorry. My memory really isn't what it used to be. I must have mixed up my numbers. I think, do you have the card in your hand? Yes, I do have the card in my hand, dear. I'm just trying to be careful with my numbers. What should I do next? I think you need to read me the card again. Oh, all right, dear. Let me take a good look at it again.

12:08Daisy, do you? The first number, I believe, is four. Daisy, I'm running. Daisy.

12:12Phoebe Judge:Daisy.

12:20Phoebe Judge:We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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14:50When Ben Hopkins and Morton Lagarth started working on Daisy in 2024, they knew they wanted to create some kind of character that could take the scammers on a lot of detours. How did you choose a grandmother? I mean, how did you land on, okay, we're going to have a grandmother character? I mean, it basically goes back to the fact that these scammers are looking for what they consider a vulnerable victim. So we thought that an old lady would be the perfect victim, so to say, who may or may not know her technology very well or might take a while to find her glasses. Ben says they also chose a grandmother because at the time, the technology they were using was slow.

15:40Phoebe Judge:There was a delay before Daisy responded. So almost by leveraging that bias that people have potentially when engaging with an older person around the field of technology, and also considering that a lot of these scammers call in from far-off places where delay might be considered acceptable, it all kind of worked together in our favor. People over the age of 60 are often targeted by scammers, partly because, unlike younger generations, they still answer the phone. The FCC warns against so-called grandparent scams and says they're becoming more sophisticated. In 2020, two men in Tampa, Florida, were caught running one.

16:31Phoebe Judge:They'd call people and pretend to be, for example, an attorney for their grandchild who'd been arrested and needed money for bail. In total, they brought in more than$380 ,000. Ben and Morton say that when they created Daisy, they liked the idea of turning the tables, making a grandmother scam the scammers. How did you get the name Daisy? Well, I think basically we wanted something that gave a little bit of a hint of what we're doing, right? So obviously there's AI within the name of Daisy. So it was sort of like hidden in plain sight. But we also just like the name Daisy. It's a very sort of traditional British name and it just felt right.

17:21And they had to figure out Daisy's personality. We wanted to make sure that Daisy felt like a real old lady, a real granny. And we all have grannies, so we put a little bit of our grannies into Daisy. Everyone in one of our project had their own version of a granny. So Ben's granny was a mean lemon meringue pie maker. So that part of her personality became part of Daisy. My grandma loves knitting, or loved knitting, and that became part of Daisy. So we actually created like almost an allogamation of everyone's granny to sort of form the personality of Daisy.

18:10Phoebe Judge:And they created a family for Daisy, one that she really likes to talk about. She likes to talk about her husband, late husband Norman, who she was very much in love with. He absolutely loved cricket. And that's something that came out because she was talking to a scammer who was into cricket. And then as soon as the scammer said, oh, I like cricket too, she just went off on a tangent and talked about how much her husband loved it. and it really felt like, you know, she was reminiscing. Oliver and Olivia and Hunter are her grandkids. So she often loves to talk about what they've been up to. It might be a birthday party.

18:58It might be a new hobby that they're indulging in and that they've been telling her about. So she kind of walks scammers into her life and all the different layers and connections of it. She has friends that she plays bridge with, so she might talk about that. She likes to volunteer at the local church, so she will sometimes just start talking about a conversation that she had with one of those friends.

19:26Phoebe Judge:On our call, I decided to change strategy and abandon the credit card numbers. I tried to get some information about her bank account. I do appreciate your persistence. I'm afraid I don't keep much in the bank these days Just a few bits and bobs for my knitting And perhaps some scones for the grandchildren I do hope I can manage something But I really need to check my account details Can you remind me what I'm supposed to be looking for, dear? You only have enough money for knitting and some scones? I don't believe that, Daisy Oh dear, it's true I live quite simply these days, you see My late husband Norman always said, waste not, want not.

20:11I try to stick to that. But really, I do have enough for the essentials, I assure you. I use my pension for things like food and keeping the lights on. It's just that I like to save where I can for little treats, you know. My grandchildren love the scones I bake. I promise I can manage the basics. But what do you need me to do now?

20:36For someone who doesn't actually understand AI and how you could create DAISY, in the most simple way, how would that even work? So it is a combination of multiple AI tools all working together in a little domino effect that all happens in a couple hundred milliseconds. So on the call, the scammer speaks to Daisy. The first model interprets what the scammer has said and then turns that into text. It transcribes it. That gets then fed into a large language model, which is like ChatGPT, which many of us all use. It contains Daisy's personality. It contains a lot of scammer data. If you write something to ChatGPT, it will give you a response.

21:31That's essentially what Daisy's brain is doing. It's just that brain has been specifically trained with a lot of scamming data to understand how scammers behave, what scammers might say, all these things. And because it has all that knowledge, it's able to refer back to that, as well as the personality we have created for her. and thereby it's able to sort of formulate a response that it knows the scammer it might be looking for, but also that feels like something that an old lady might say. But first, Daisy needed a voice. They tried what Ben calls off-the-shelf voices, readily available voices from an AI platform.

22:18But he says that type of voice didn't feel right. So it was great at reading prose or something dramatic, but we just knew that when a voice like that was speaking to a scammer, they'd catch on really, really quick. So we just put a call out for volunteers. One of our colleagues, Gran, volunteered to come in for a day trip, and she came to the studio and she sat down, and we had a natter for a couple of hours. and that was all for the purpose of collecting data to train a voice which we felt could be believable. They recorded her talking for two hours and then they tried to add her voice to Daisy's programming.

23:02Phoebe Judge:Ben says it was only really supposed to be a test to see if using someone's voice would even work. But over time, everyone just fell in love with it. She became Daisy. They spent a lot of time having conversations with Daisy. We needed to test the model and make sure that Daisy was behaving properly. So we had her on our speed dials and we spent a lot of time talking to Daisy on our commute. For example, my girlfriend actually got pretty mad at me because I was always talking to Daisy when I shouldn't be. I do my commutes from Waterloo and I get to walk over Westminster Bridge and I'd be often just chatting to Daisy.

23:47And I remember one day she was talking about Ollie, her grandson's new hamster that he'd gotten for his birthday. And I just started talking about the fact that I had gerbils when I was a kid. And it was only by the time I got to the other side of the bridge that I went, what am I doing? This is an AI. I mean, is it kind of in this situation where you're able to have a conversation with someone who just wants to know more? You know, they're not going to get mad at you and they're not. It's just this kind of a friend you can talk to. Yeah, I think it's really interesting in the whole field of AI.

24:25You know, there are a lot of like conversational companion based chatbots and things out there. And it kind of leans into the human ability to want to communicate with anyone. And if that happens to be someone who's artificial, that we're able to suspend our sense of disbelief. And that's what we found ourselves doing. We were the builders of this thing. We designed the personality. So you would have thought that we might have suffered some sort of impedance in being able to just naturally chat to Daisy. But it just wasn't the case.