O2Daisy vs Scammers

With nearly one in five Brits (22%) experiencing attempted fraud on a weekly basis, digital scams have become an everyday threat. Fraudsters are increasingly sophisticated — impersonating trusted organisations and preying on the vulnerable, particularly the elderly. Virgin Media O2, in partnership with VCCP and faith, set out to fight back in a way that was both innovative and impactful: by wasting scammers’ time before they could reach real victims. The challenge was to develop a creative solution that could match — and beat — scammers at their own game, all while raising awareness of common fraud tactics.

Scam calls are a relentless plague, designed to exploit and defraud. But what if the tables could be turned? What if we could fight back not with aggressive tactics, but with the disarming charm of a sweet, rambling nan?

Meet Daisy, a lifelike state-of-the-art Conversational AI designed to speak with scammers and keep them on the phone for as long as possible to waste their time and keep them away from the public. To make Daisy truly convincing, we knew we couldn't just give her a voice. We had to build an entire digital persona from the ground up. This meant creating a rich backstory complete with friends, family, hobbies, and even pets. Every detail, no matter how small, contributes to Daisy's authenticity, allowing her meandering stories to feel genuine, like those of your own beloved nan. Her "late husband, Norman," for example, isn't just a throwaway line; he's a touchstone in her rich, fabricated memories.

Real human conversations are fluid, with overlaps, interruptions, and utterances. Daisy's conversational model is trained to handle these gracefully. If a scammer interjects, Daisy doesn't just cut them off or ignore them; she's designed to acknowledge the interruption, perhaps with a "Oh, bless your heart, let me just finish this thought, dearie," before seamlessly continuing her story or addressing the new input. This natural give-and-take is crucial for maintaining the illusion of a genuine person.

Minimising latency between Daisy and the scammer is essential to avoiding suspicion and we committed to ensuring that our average latency remained well below the 1000ms threshold where conversations start to feel robotic. Prompts were optimised for LLM processing, routing configured to minimise cross data-centre communication, and copious layers of caching and prefetching employed to allow the conversation to flow smoothly.

To ensure total believability, her voice was modelled on a real-life grandmother of a staff member from VCCP, giving her that warm, familiar, and utterly convincing tone. Beyond her direct impact in tying up scammers, Daisy has also been a powerful awareness-raising tool for the crucial 7726 scam reporting number. Her highly publicised existence, often featuring clips of her frustrating conversations with fraudsters, serves as a compelling and memorable example of exactly the kind of deceptive calls and messages people should be reporting. By showcasing how easily even a sophisticated AI can be targeted, Daisy underscores the pervasive nature of these scams and the importance of taking action.

Daisy didn’t just waste scammers’ time — she made a real difference. With individual calls lasting up to 40 minutes, Daisy successfully tied up scam phone lines for thousands of hours — keeping fraudsters occupied with everything from knitting patterns to DIY, instead of targeting real people. Her charm, emotional nuance, and realism made her a surprisingly effective line of defence — one that left scammers frustrated, exposed, and out of time.

The campaign also led to measurable behavioural and brand impact.

• Awareness of 7726, the number people can use to report scam messages, rose by 44% during the campaign (from 18% to 26%).

• Reports to 7726 saw an 8% month-on-month uplift, showing that Daisy’s story drove action.

• O2’s brand perception around fraud prevention increased by 10 percentage points — from 24% to 34%.

By turning the tables on fraudsters and putting AI to work for good, Daisy not only protected people, but reshaped how they think about scam prevention — and what’s possible when technology and creativity come together with purpose.

You can read more about how this tech and digital personality development manifested here - https://www.vccp.com/work/o2/ai-granny-scambaiter/