Inspiration
AI is evolving incredibly fast. Every day, it becomes harder to distinguish what's real and what's fake. AI-generated voices sound almost human, and scammers are finding smarter ways to manipulate people.
At the same time, we kept hearing stories about elderly people losing their life savings to phone scams. People who spent decades working and saving can lose everything in a single phone call.
That made us ask one simple question:
If scammers are using AI to become more powerful, why can't we use AI to stop them?
That's how Busted was born.
What it does
Busted protects those who can't always protect themselves.
Busted is an AI-powered phone scam protection system designed to detect suspicious conversations in real time, identify potential fraud, and stop scammers before they can cause harm.
Our approach has three levels of protection:
Safe: No suspicious activity detected. The call continues normally.
Suspicious: Potential scam indicators are detected, and a trusted family member is alerted.
Danger: A serious scam threat is detected, triggering intervention to prevent further harm.
Our vision is to make this protection available to everyone, even elderly people using basic phones without smartphones or apps.
One phone call shouldn't cost someone their life savings.
How we built it
We started by researching how phone scams work and identifying the patterns scammers commonly use to manipulate their victims.
From there, we designed a system that uses AI to analyze conversations, recognize potential scam indicators, and determine the appropriate level of risk.
We built a working prototype to demonstrate our concept, alongside a website explaining how Busted protects families and responds to potential threats.
Throughout the hackathon, we focused on keeping the solution simple, understandable, and accessible.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge was figuring out how to connect our AI system to actual phone calls.
We wanted Busted to work directly during conversations, without requiring elderly users to download applications, buy new devices, or learn complicated technology.
Exploring how to integrate AI with traditional telephone infrastructure was one of the most technically challenging parts of our project.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We had fun, worked together as a team, and turned an idea into something tangible in just a few days.
We challenged ourselves, learned new things, and most importantly, we delivered!
We're especially proud that we worked on a problem that could genuinely make a difference in people's lives.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We had fun, worked as a team, and turned an idea into a working prototype in just a few days. We're proud that we challenged ourselves, tackled a real-world problem, and created something with the potential to protect people's life savings. Most importantly, we had fun and we delivered!
What we learned
We learned that the hardest part of building an AI product isn't always the AI itself. Sometimes, it's figuring out how to make powerful technology work in the real world.
We also realized that the best solutions don't necessarily require users to change their habits. They should fit naturally into people's lives.
And perhaps our biggest takeaway: AI shouldn't only make technology more powerful. It should make people safer.
What's next for BUSTED
Our next goal is to take Busted beyond the hackathon.
We want to explore partnerships with telecommunications providers, improve real-time scam detection, and test our solution in real-world environments.
Ultimately, we want to build a world where nobody has to worry about their parents or grandparents losing everything because of a phone scam.
Scammers are getting smarter. It's time protection got smarter too.
