Chatbot For Home PC? [telecom]

As I recall, Asterisk can be programmed to set up an automated attendant for anyone calling into it, and some of the documentation included some rather hilarious implementations of "voice mail jail" that serve an actual useful purpose illustrating how NOT to design a voice-response system: don't have too many choices at each prompt, don't put in infinite loops the user can't get out of, give the user a choice for "none of the above", etc. It is probably better at messing with *live* telephone solicitors, although it might be made to pretend to be a human with varying degrees of success, even a human answering a call. It can send and receive DTMF dialing tones, imitate the "out of order" tones, speak, etc. You could have it say "Hello", wait a few seconds, repeat, and then ask if anyone is on the line.

Asterisk, for those not familiar with it, is an open-source PBX that can operate with VoIP, or, with the right hardware, connect to land lines or local phone extensions. It can run on a dedicated PC but may require some special hardware. You could set up individual voice mail boxes for each member of your household. If you're actually going to have it handle real phone calls you care about in addition to the telescum, you probably want a computer dedicated to handling the phone calls, rather than shared with web surfing and gaming.

Hmmm.... has anyone tried putting a very simple Asterisk system with 2 local extensions and one outside line on a Raspberry Pi?

It would not be difficult to construct a possibly very complex blocking system based on Caller-ID, and doing things like reading back the Caller-ID to the caller wouldn't be difficult.

"The number you are calling from, Five Five Five One Two One Two, has been banned. Please pay your telephone solicitation bill One Hundred Thousand Dollars."

Every time Comcast calls or shows up at my door wanting me to subscribe to their digital phone (VoIP) service, I remind them that it won't work in my home if there's a power failure. This usually confuses them, as they don't understand the problem. "How do I report a power failure to the electric company if the phone doesn't work?". Actually, that's not a real problem, but it makes the Comcast guy go away. I'd either (a) let one of hundreds of affected neighbors also report it, (b) let the smart meters report it (which I presume they do by going silent rather than reporting in periodically), or (c) use my cell phone, assuming the cell towers and phone exchanges have power. Asterisk suffers from the same problem. If that bothers you, arrange backup power.

Some robocalls (and most live telescum calls) announce themselves with a "clunk" sound after I say "hello" (at which point I guess they decided I'm human and connect me), and that's my cue to wait a couple of seconds to say "Put this number on your do not call list". Some apparent robocalls actually seem to recognize this, even if I'm talking over the recording. I don't know whether I actually end up on the Do Not Call list, but they stop talking, sometimes say that they are putting me on the Do Not Call list, and hang up.

On a slightly different subject, I think telephone solicitors are eventually going to make doing any kind of business over the phone impractical. Google "Can You Hear Me Phone Scam". They've now figured out how to make the Y-word (the usual answer to that question) commit you to any contract they want, at least enough to put the banks and credit card companies on their side rather than yours (they need your credit card number for this, but from all the data breaches that's easy to get). What I don't get is why they have to get a recording of *ME* saying the Y-word when they could just as well use one of Donald Trump saying it - banks don't have my voiceprint, I don't think, and they wouldn't use it to my advantage even if they did.

Has anyone got a good answer to "Can You Hear Me?" or "Did you get my email?" that cannot commit you to a contract (or a sale, or a marriage)?

Caller: Hello, I'm Mr. Tel E. Marketer from General Nuisance. May I speak to Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith: I'm sorry, I can't use that word over the phone to strangers. Caller: What word? Mr. Smith: I'm sorry, I can't use that word over the phone to strangers. Caller: Is the word "Yes"? Mr. Smith: I'm sorry, I can't use that word over the phone to strangers. Caller: Are you Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith: I'm sorry, I can't use that word over the phone to strangers.

I've already participated in several conversations like this with me as the caller (no, I'm not a telephone solicitor, I'm just trying to return a call to someone specific that I *do* know, but the person who answers might not know me.) I guess the local news reports of the scam have been taken seriously.