Telus Uses AI to Alter Call-Agent Accents

gnabgib

Original source (please submit): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-telus-ai-ac... Related last year: AI Accent Conversion for call centers (48 points, 70 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43514141 Call centres using AI to 'whiten' Indian accents (8+6 points, 0+6 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43292311

parpfish

i know that i'm supposed to be mad that this is racist or it help obfuscate offshoring, but i'm fine with it if it actually makes conversing easier.

guessmyname

I think this is a good idea. Almost every time I get a call from TELUS about a new service or promotion, it’s someone from the Philippines or India. A lot of them speak English fluently, but the accent and phrasing can be pretty different from what I’m used to, and I don’t always catch everything they’re saying. Sometimes I feel like I’m guessing a big chunk of the conversation, which makes me not want to engage, especially on sales calls. It matters more when I’m the one calling them for billing or technical support. In those cases, clarity really counts, and it can get frustrating when I have to keep asking for repeats or try to piece things together. Honestly, I’d love something like this for my own speech too. I’m Japanese and have a fairly strong accent, and it would be nice if people could understand me more easily without having to guess.

Brajeshwar

Oh! Dear Lord. I still want to hear my Indian friends speak Indian to me during Support Calls. These days, I’m hearing American accents trying to calm me down over my complaints on that excess masala in the idli-dosa-pav-bhaji butteerr-chicken combo in the El Camino Eatery in the outskirts of Jhalandar.

wewewedxfgdf

Doesn't matter. As soon as I hear the "Mr Firstname and how are you today?" I hang up. Call spammers have not worked out that a formal polite greeting is a big giveaway.

ares623

Like all things AI, this one's tricky. Scam calls sounding "more legitimate" because it passes the (unfortunately racist) filters most people have.

caonidaye

Usually the title goes: XXX uses AI to replace Call-Agents

superkuh

Comcast (Xfinity) is doing this too. I was absolutely convinced I was talking to an artificial voice but the human-like capabilities of that voice to respond were far beyond what I'd expect out of LLMs. I think it must have just been done to hide the accent.

j45

This will also let the telco further train agents to handle calls without the humans once enough scenarios are in place. Still, they could just give the employees training to learn additional accents. The English accents around the world were left behind with the subsets of English people were taught to be able to aspire to entry level administrative jobs. Someone recommended this to read, not sure if anyone else has read it: https://archive.org/details/educationascultu00carn It feels like it bears some underpinning and contextual relevance.

kelseydh

Does anybody have a demo of this technology in use? I'm very curious to see how it sounds in practice. Uncanny or hyperrealistic?

sjtgraham

I would rather speak an actual AI rather than an offshore operator using AI to disguise their accent.

diego_moita

Doesn't matter. Whenever Telus calls my standard answer is the call blocker.

dlenski

While this is interesting and newsworthy, especially for those of us who live in Canada and have to deal with Canada’s Telco/Internet monopolies… this "article" itself appears to be a crappy LLM summary of some other piece of information. Anyone have the original source?