AI's transformation of Indian call centres (including accents)

There was a fascinating piece in The Washington Post last week that I wanted to draw your attention to, simply because it's a good 'sign of the times' piece and also because it's highlighting a particular aspect of Conversational AI: Accent transformation:

In 2023, Kumar’s employer, the Paris-based outsourcing giant Teleperformance, rolled out an accent-altering software at his office in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi. In real time, the AI smooths out Kumar’s accent — and those of at least 42,000 other Indian call center agents — making their speech more understandable to American clients on the other end of the line.

The article goes on to highlight the work of the team at Sanas, who built the tool that Teleperformance is using.

I had a play with the Sanas demo on their homepage, and it's really rather good.

I'd recommend sitting and reading the article as it mentions quite a few predictions (and instances) where Conversational AI is either helping or, in some cases, replacing humans. That's a key issue for a country where so much of the economy is based on humans serving other humans by voice.