Teleperformance SE, the most important name centre operator on the planet, is deploying synthetic intelligence throughout its centres in India to ‘soften’ the accents of English-speaking Indian workers, in accordance with a Bloomberg report. The corporate says it will make them extra ‘comprehensible’.

Notably, Teleperformance gives buyer assist to main firms like Apple, Samsung, ByteDance and TikTok.

In keeping with the report, the expertise known as accent translation and is coupled with background noise cancellation. The corporate’s Deputy Chief Government Officer, Thomas Mackenbrock, mentioned in an interview that typically the accent of an Indian agent is difficult to grasp.

He added that the expertise can “neutralise the accent of the Indian speaker with zero latency,” creating “extra intimacy, will increase the shopper satisfaction, and reduces the common dealing with time: it’s a win-win for each events.”

The expertise was developed by a US startup Sanas. Teleperformance invested $13 million in Sanas earlier this 12 months, in a bid to advertise AI partnerships this 12 months. It has dedicated to investing almost $104 million in such partnerships this 12 months.

Whereas the brand new expertise, which reduces background noise and improves accent, could also be thought of an assist to brokers, it additionally carries a danger for nations like India and the Philippines, which have constructed market-leading positions within the sector attributable to their giant variety of English-speaking individuals. These new instruments might diminish staff’ cultural identities and the authenticity of conversations.

In keeping with Sanas’ web site, it developed the expertise to “scale back accent-based discrimination”.

It’s out there for Indian and Filipino accents presently, however it would quickly be out there for different areas, together with Latin America, the place Teleperformance has many staff supporting US-based clients.

Mackenbrock mentioned that AI is ubiquitous, however the human ingredient is ‘extremely essential’. He added that Teleperformance can be making a push to supply companies to tech giants constructing AI fashions.

“Whether or not it’s OpenAI, or any AI mannequin on the planet, it wants human assist for coaching,” he mentioned. This consists of creating, testing and labelling knowledge.