Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims will make them more understandable.
  • archonet@lemy.lolEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    honestly, this is brilliant. Not only is it going to make it easier to understand people with really thick accents – I’ve worked with lots of Indian people before (hotel industry) and I still get tripped up from time to time, especially over a crappy phone line – but it’ll also probably cut down on a lot of the racist shit they may take from customers. I can imagine the average call center employee with a thick accent takes a fair bit more abuse than call center employees who speak without an accent.

    on the other hand, this might also make it harder to identify a scam call immediately if this becomes commonplace. Not that perfect English speakers aren’t also capable of scamming you, but, usually the scam callers aren’t perfect English speakers.