"A prominent New Hampshire Democrat said the makers of a robocall mimicking the voice of Joe Biden and encouraging Democrats not to vote in the primary on Tuesday should be "prosecuted to the fullest extent" for attempting "an attack on democracy" itself."
"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 achatbot, 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."
"Jadoun was trying to capture enough audio and video data to build an AI deepfake of Rathore that would convince 300,000 potential voters around Ajmer that they'd had a personalized conversation with him-but excess movement would break the algorithm."