'Dear, did you say pastry?': meet the 'AI granny' driving scammers up the wall

An elderly grandmother who chats about knitting patterns, recipes for scones and the blackness of the night sky to anyone who will listen has become an unlikely tool in combatting scammers. Like many people, "Daisy" is beset with countless calls from fraudsters, who often try to take control of her computer after claiming she has been hacked. But because of her dithering and inquiries about whether they like cups of tea, the criminals end up furious and frustrated rather than successful. Daisy is, of course, 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.