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this will upset many of you, especially Tigrrrr!
Posted on: June 22, 2025 at 15:35:40 CT
Ace UNC
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GURGAON, India — For three years, Kartikeya Kumar hesitated before picking up the phone, anticipating another difficult conversation with another frustrated customer.
The call center agent, now 29, had tried everything to eliminate what a colleague called the “Indian-ism” in his accent. He mimicked the dialogue from Marvel movies and belted out songs by Metallica and Pink Floyd. Relief finally arrived in the form of artificial intelligence.
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.
“Now the customer doesn’t know where I am located,” Kumar said. “If it makes the caller happy, it makes me happy, too.”
His experience offers a glimpse into how generative AI — turbocharged by the release of ChatGPT — is reshaping India’s massive service industry and is a data point for optimists who believe the technology will complement, rather than replace, human workers.
The call center agent, now 29, had tried everything to eliminate what a colleague called the “Indian-ism” in his accent. He mimicked the dialogue from Marvel movies and belted out songs by Metallica and Pink Floyd. Relief finally arrived in the form of artificial intelligence.
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.
“Now the customer doesn’t know where I am located,” Kumar said. “If it makes the caller happy, it makes me happy, too.”
His experience offers a glimpse into how generative AI — turbocharged by the release of ChatGPT — is reshaping India’s massive service industry and is a data point for optimists who believe the technology will complement, rather than replace, human workers.
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this will upset many of you, especially Tigrrrr! - Ace UNC - 6/22 15:35:40
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