BT says new AI technology is stopping 5 million scam and unwanted calls a month – here’s how

BT has turned to AI in a bid to quell the large number of scam and unwanted calls plaguing Brits on their landlines every day.

The telecommunications giant claims its new artificial intelligence technology has stopped millions of scammer attempts in the past four months.

The AI ​​tool monitors incoming calls to notify customers of any suspected spam or scam calls. It is powered by the American protection company Hiya.

BT introduced the scam prevention tool in May and in the four-month period stopped 20.1 million scam and spam calls in their tracks – 2.7 million scam calls and 17.7 million “annoying” spam calls.

Given this trajectory, more than 60 million fraudulent calls could be prevented from reaching landline users in the space of a year, or 5 million per month.

Home phones are still used by four in five people over the age of 65 in the UK, a group that faces a particularly high risk of phone-based ‘vishing’ scams according to BT.

BT is urging its landline users to check they (and their loved ones) have the new technology set up, as scam calls tend to increase in the months leading up to Christmas.

AI voice cloning scams are on the rise, prompting Starling Bank to launch an awareness campaign about them to warn customers.

An AI voice cloning scam is a sophisticated type of scam in which scammers use voice cloning technology to replicate a person’s voice from a short snippet of audio.

Scammers can easily and cheaply capture and create deepfake audio online in just a few minutes.

Scammers can then identify their victims’ family members and use the cloned voice to make a phone call, voicemail or voicemail to them, asking for money they urgently need, for example due to an accident or to pay the rent. .

How does BT block scam and unwanted calls?

BT’s landline service, Digital Voice, has incorporated an AI-powered tool that monitors incoming calls and notifies customers of any suspected spam calls.

It uses machine learning, powered by spam and scam call protection company Hiya, to collect scam detection information and improve protection with every malicious call it encounters: in one day it can block more than 46,500 scam calls.

Upon receiving a possible unwanted call, customers see a visual warning on their landline screen that says “nuisance?”

They then have the option to reject or accept an incoming call that the technician marks as spam.

Scam calls are automatically routed to the customer’s spam voicemail, protecting them from the threat of scammers.

Any call from a registered company will display your name to verify it is genuine.

UK residents received an average of three unwanted calls per month from January to June this year, and 28 per cent of all unknown calls were flagged as spam, Hiya data shows.

This adds up to around 195 million unwanted calls per month.

Some 2.5 million BT customers already receive the new call verification service through Digital Voice.

BT says this figure will double as more customers upgrade to digital landlines, and BT expects to block more than 1.5 million scam calls monthly once all customers have switched to Digital Voice.

Lucy Baker MBE, director of BT, said: ‘This new Hiya technology is now integrated with Digital Voice and is proving incredibly effective in stopping scam calls. We remain committed to protecting customers during the shift to digital landlines.

Alex Algard, CEO of Hiya, added: “We are delighted to support BT in their mission to protect users from unwanted calls. It is fantastic to see that our technology has successfully blocked fraudulent and unwanted calls.”