Telus Uses AI to Alter Call-Agent Accents
4 hours ago
- #AI in Customer Service
- #Corporate Ethics
- #Labor Advocacy
- Telus is using AI to modify call-centre agents' accents in real time to reduce accent-related friction.
- The software, built by Tomato.ai, is applied to offshore agents, but labor groups criticize it as deceptive and demand mandatory disclosure.
- Rogers and Bell have stated they have no plans to adopt similar voice-altering technology, and the rollout has faced public backlash in Canada.
- Technically, the system involves speech recognition, accent conversion, and vocoders, but raises operational tradeoffs like latency and naturalness.
- Regulatory responses, technical disclosures from Tomato.ai, and transparency from other operators are future areas to monitor.