<
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/07/ai-chatbots-phone-scams>
"A scammer calls, and asks for a passcode. Malcolm, an elderly man with an
English accent, is confused.
“What’s this business you’re talking about?” Malcolm asks.
Another day, another scam phone call.
This time, Ibrahim, a cooperative and polite man with an Egyptian accent, picks
up. “Frankly, I am not too sure I can recall buying anything recently,” he
tells the hopeful con artist. “Maybe one of the kids did,” Ibrahim goes on,
“but that’s not your fault, is it?”
The scammers are real, but Malcolm and Ibrahim are not. They’re just two of the
conversational artificial intelligence bots created by Prof Dali Kaafar and his
team. Through his research at Macquarie University, Kaafar founded Apate –
named for the Greek goddess of deception.
Apate’s aim is to defeat global phone scams with conversational AI, taking
advantage of systems already in place where telecommunications companies divert
calls they can identify as coming from scammers.
Kafaar was inspired to turn the tables on telephone fraudsters after he played
a “dad’s joke” on a scam caller in front of his two kids while they enjoyed a
picnic in the sun. With inane chatter, he kept the scammer on the line. “The
kids had a very good laugh,” he says. “And I was thinking the purpose was to
deceive the scammer, to waste their time so they don’t talk to others.
“Scamming the scammers, if you like.”
The next day he called his team from the university’s Cyber Security Hub in.
There must be a better way than his “dad joke” method, he thought. And there
had to be something smarter than a popular existing piece of technology – the
Lennybot.
Before Malcolm and Ibrahim, there was Lenny.
Lenny is a doddery, old Australian man, keen for a rambling chat. He’s a
chatbot, designed to troll telemarketers.
With a thready voice, tinged with a slight whistle, Lenny repeats various
phrases on loop. Each phrase kicks in after 1.5 seconds of silence, to mimic
the rhythm of a conversation.
The anonymous creator of Lenny posted on Reddit that they made the chatbot to
be a “telemarketer’s worst nightmare … a lonely old man who is up for a chat,
proud of his family, and can’t focus on the telemarketer’s goal”. The act of
tying up the scammers has been called scambaiting."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
