Man in Malaysia develops AI to trick scammers & waste their time on WhatsApp
In a bold move to fight back against online scams, one developer, Mr Dylan Tan, took matters into his own hands and developed a unique Artificial Intelligence (AI) to trick scammers.
Called Scammers On Hold AI (SOHAI), the bot is designed to engage scammers in endless, frustrating conversations that lead nowhere.
In a video on LinkedIn posted on Saturday (15 Feb), Mr Tan said that he built the AI to “fight back” against the scammers by wasting their time and frustrating their scamming efforts.
The Malaysian developer, who founded the Singapore-based business Replyr.ai built on the same technology used in SOHAI, also shared his creation in the Facebook group Entrepreneurs and Startups in Malaysia.
AI pretends to be ‘gullible senior citizen’ to keep scammers busy
In the video, Mr Tan revealed that SOHAI operates through WhatsApp, posing as a clueless ‘senior citizen’ named Madam Soh.
“If a scammer contacts you, or you see an ad for a scam, give them SOHAI’s phone number,” he instructed in the post.
Posing as Madam Soh, the AI then bombards the scammer with endless questions, bizarre responses, and random distractions—anything to keep them occupied for as long as possible.
If the scammer dares to ignore it, SOHAI even follows up, pestering them just like they do to potential victims.
Additionally, Mr Tan shared that SOHAI is also designed to reply at random intervals, between a few seconds up to a day, to keep the scammers “baited as long as possible”.
Every interaction also gets logged into a Google Sheets leaderboard, tracking the total time wasted and summarizing the ridiculous exchanges.
Users who encounter scammers can simply share SOHAI’s WhatsApp number (+65 8859 1998) and let the bot do the dirty work.
“Every minute of scammer time wasted is one less minute of them scamming someone else,” Mr Tan wrote.
Netizens love it but worry scammers might outsmart bot
Netizens have been hyped about SOHAI’s potential. One excited user said they couldn’t wait to unleash it on an alleged scammer from Nigeria.
Source: LinkedIn
Another cheeky commenter suggested Dylan should create an AI to handle their wife’s messages—presumably to stall “nagging.”
Source: LinkedIn
But not everyone is convinced SOHAI will remain effective for long. Some netizens pointed out that scammers might eventually recognize the bot and block its number.
Source: LinkedIn
In response to this, Mr Tan told MS News that he can hot swap numbers once scammers figure it out, i.e. create multiple accounts and replicate SOHAI.
One even joked that scammers could retaliate by developing their own AI to counter SOHAI.
Source: LinkedIn
Also read: Elderly woman scammed of S$100K days after retirement, she talked to scammers for 4 hours
Elderly woman scammed of S$100K days after retirement, she talked to scammers for 4 hours
Have news you must share? Get in touch with us via email at news@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image adapted from Dylan Tan on LinkedIn and Dragos Condrea on Canva for illustration purposes only.
