June 19, 2024 SoftBank, the Japanese telecommunications giant, recently announced the development of “emotion-canceling” technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that will modify the voices of angry customers to sound calmer during phone calls with customer service representatives. The project, in development for three years, aims to alleviate the psychological burden on call center staff who face harassment from customers. SoftBank plans to launch the technology by March 2026.
According to a report from The Asahi Shimbun, SoftBank’s project relies on an AI model to alter the tone and pitch of a customer’s voice in real-time during a phone call. Led by Toshiyuki Nakatani, the developers trained the system using a dataset of over 10,000 voice samples from actors expressing various emotions, including yelling and accusatory tones.
By analyzing these voice samples, the AI model has learned to recognize and modify vocal characteristics associated with anger and hostility. When a customer speaks to a call center operator, the AI processes the audio, adjusting the pitch and inflection to make the voice sound calmer and less threatening. The technology does not alter the content of the customer’s speech but retains a slight element of audible anger to ensure operators can still gauge the emotional state of the caller.
The announcement has received mixed reactions. Many call center operators, including those outside Japan, welcome the technology, hoping it will reduce the stress of dealing with abusive customers. However, some critics argue that this approach addresses the symptoms rather than the root causes of customer anger.
A Reddit thread on SoftBank’s AI plans features call center operators sharing stories of harassment. One commenter noted, “I’ve worked in a call center for a long time. People need to realize that screaming at call center agents will get you nowhere.” Another remarked, “There is no way faster to escalate a call than to try and calm the person down.”
SoftBank expects to introduce its emotion-canceling solution by March 31, 2026. The company hopes to create a safer work environment for call center operators, enabling them to provide better services to customers. However, there is concern that ignoring customer anger could backfire if the underlying issues causing dissatisfaction are not addressed.
One Redditor commented, “If you have so many angry customers that it is affecting the mental health of your call center operators, then maybe address the reasons you have so many irate customers instead of just pretending that they’re not angry.”
