Coming soon to an online scam near you – Indian call centre agents with non-Indian accents, thanks to the latest in AI technology being implemented by Teleperformance and (eventually) the world of telesales.

As reported by Yahoo Finance,  Teleperformance, the world’s largest call centre company, has invested $13 million in Sanas AI technology to modify Indian agents’ accents in real-time. The company claims this move will make their agents easier to understand over the phone.

The technology, called accent translation, is already being deployed in call centres in India, where agents provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients, including Apple, TikTok and Samsung.

Deputy-Chief Executive Officer Thomas Mackenbrock says:

“When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard to hear, to understand. [This new technology] cam neutralise the accent of the Indian speaker with zero latency. This creates more intimacy, increases the customer satisfaction, and reduces the average handling time: it is a win-win for both parties.”

The roll-out of accent translation is part of a bigger push by Teleperformance to invest up to $104 million in AI partnerships this year, which makes you wonder whether they’ll eventually do away with the human agents altogether and have us chatting to frighteningly realistic AI robots on the phone instead.

For now, there’s naturally some criticism over the use of AI to modify the accents of Indian call centre workers. Social media users are calling it “racist”, “monstrous”, and all the rest of it. Still, I don’t think anyone can deny that language barriers can be incredibly frustrating, especially when it comes to speaking over the phone. Speaking with customer service is already a nightmare and nobody likes doing it, but it’s always a relief when you’re connected to someone who speaks your native tongue and has the same accent as you, isn’t it? Hopefully that’s not a controversial thing to say.

Of course, India is always taking the brunt of the complaints when it comes to people moaning about telephone customer service, and so this latest technology could end up being the solution to that problem. We’ll have the potential to communicate with people around the world no matter what language they speak, but it’s also terrifying to think how this technology could be used when it inevitably ends up in the wrong hands (scammers) or when AI takes over these jobs completely. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

P.S. can’t help but be reminded of this Simpsons scene:

To watch a man get the ultimate revenge on a call centre that fired him, click HERE.