AI Chatbot to Provide Targeted Alerts During Natural Disasters
AI
Zaker Adham
18 days ago
08 July 2024
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Zaker Adham
Summary
Summary
A new AI technology called Apate is revolutionizing the battle against phone scammers by deploying chatbots to keep fraudsters engaged while gathering data to disrupt their operations.
When a scammer calls and asks for a passcode, Malcolm, an elderly man with a distinct English accent, responds with confusion. "What’s this business you’re talking about?" he inquires.
On another occasion, Ibrahim, a cooperative and polite man with an Egyptian accent, answers the call. "Frankly, I am not too sure I can recall buying anything recently," he tells the scammer. "Maybe one of the kids did, but that’s not your fault, is it?"
While the scammers are genuine, Malcolm and Ibrahim are not. They are conversational AI bots created by Professor Dali Kaafar and his team at Macquarie University. Kaafar founded Apate, named after the Greek goddess of deception, to tackle global phone scams using advanced AI. This system leverages existing telecommunications infrastructure that redirects known scam calls to these bots.
Kaafar was inspired to outsmart phone scammers after amusing his children by keeping a scammer on the line with nonsensical chatter during a picnic. "The kids had a very good laugh," he recalls. "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, Kaafar and his team at the university’s Cyber Security Hub brainstormed ways to improve upon his “dad joke” method, leading to the creation of Apate. They aimed to develop something more sophisticated than the popular Lennybot, a chatbot that simulates a chatty old man to frustrate telemarketers.
Before Malcolm and Ibrahim, there was Lenny. Designed to troll telemarketers, Lenny is an elderly Australian man who enjoys long-winded conversations. His phrases, delivered in a slightly whistling voice, are repeated on a loop to mimic real conversations.
The anonymous creator of Lenny shared on Reddit that the bot was designed 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.” This practice of tying up scammers is known as scambaiting.
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