Title: Innovative Jolly Roger Tool Empowers Users to Combat Scam Callers
The rise of scam calls has become a major nuisance for individuals across the United States, but an affordable solution has emerged. For just $24.99 per year, a new telephone service called Jolly Roger offers a clever way to handle these annoying telemarketers. By combining advanced technology, including ChatGPT and voice modulation software, Jolly Roger creates fake characters and scripts to engage scam callers, wasting their time and providing satisfaction to phone owners.
Jolly Roger, in existence for seven years, recently integrated ChatGPT capabilities into its service, resulting in an impressive feat: keeping telemarketers on the phone for up to 30 minutes. Roger Anderson, one of the company’s founders, shared this success with Insider. The integration of ChatGPT allows Jolly Roger to automate and diversify the process, introducing more characters and scenarios to actively engage telemarketers.
Subscribing to Jolly Roger grants users access to a cloud-based phone system and accompanying apps that enable them to view, listen to, and share recorded calls between the AI bot and the persistently frustrated telemarketer. Additionally, users have the exciting opportunity to create their own customized annoying characters, further amplifying the fun and frustration for scammers.
The prevalence of scam calls has surged since 2016 when Jolly Roger was initially established. In February 2016, US consumers faced a staggering 2.28 billion spam calls, but this figure climbed to 5.19 billion by January 2019 and peaked at 5.66 billion in October 2019. According to the YouMail robocall index, the number of spam calls reached 4.7 billion in November 2022 and surged to 5.08 billion in May of this year.
While managing their day jobs in the telecommunications industry, Anderson and his business partner, Steve Berkson, skillfully oversee Jolly Roger’s operations. With the integration of ChatGPT, they have been able to automate and expand their capabilities, creating a more diverse roster of characters and scenarios to captivate unsuspecting telemarketers.
Previously, the process involved hiring voice actors who would record a series of scripted phrases under Anderson and Berkson’s direction. However, Jolly Roger now employs a powerful chatbot to generate scripts, which are then voiced by Play.HT, an AI-powered text-to-voice generator that mimics the selected character’s voice. Friends and family have even contributed to the roster of personas, with Sid Berkson, Berkson’s own father, providing a 45-second audio sample for Play.HT to replicate his voice, resulting in the creation of the character Whitey Whitebeard.
Although initially challenging to get ChatGPT to cooperate when asked to waste time, the Jolly Roger team persevered, overcoming obstacles through trial and error. While the tool can only engage a fraction of active scam callers, its integration of AI technology aligns with ongoing efforts by the US government to combat call centers flooding consumers with robocalls.
To this end, the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, established last year, has taken legal action against an Arizona-based company responsible for making a staggering 7.5 billion robocalls to individuals on the National Do Not Call Registry.
As long as unidentified and dubious calls persist, Jolly Roger remains committed to alleviating the annoyance inflicted by telemarketers. By utilizing innovative AI technologies, the tool empowers individuals to take back control of their phone calls, frustrate scammers, and restore a sense of satisfaction to the phone owner.
