A startup disputes using technology to make contact center accents sound “white”

• A firm, their technology might eliminate discrimination based on accent and lessen racial abuse directed at employees.
• However, other detractors claim it is a step in the wrong direction and that language variety should be praised.
• The company calls its technology an accent translation tool.

A Silicon Valley start-up has created technology that can instantly modify call center employees’ accents. A firm, their technology might eliminate discrimination based on accent and lessen racial abuse directed at employees.

However, other detractors claim it is a step in the wrong direction and that language variety should be praised.

The agents, many of whom are from the global south, “sound white,” according to the news outlet SFGATE.

According to reports, Sanas has raised $32 million in funding since June 2022. The company calls its technology an accent translation tool.

On its website, a section called “Demo” offers visitors the chance to “hear the magic” by playing a recording of someone reading a call centre script with what appears to be a South Asian accent before clicking a slider button that changes the speech into an American accent that has a slightly robotic quality.

The start-up was charged by SFGATE with trying to make “call centre staff sound white and American, regardless of the country they’re from.”

A co-founder of Sanas, Sharath Keshava Narayana, disagreed with the assertion, telling the BBC’s Tech Tent programme that all four founders and 90% of the company’s staff were foreigners.

He said that one of the other founders’ close friend’s experience had served as inspiration for the tool in part.

That friend, a third-year graduate student at Stanford University in the US studying computer systems engineering, was forced to go back home to Nicaragua to help support his parents.

The student secured a technical support position at a call center, but was let go after three months due to discrimination based on his accent, according to Mr. Narayana.

Mr. Narayana, a former call centre employee, claimed that in his experience, agents would suffer harassment or discrimination due to their voice, and abuse the business believes its technology can stop.

But Ashleigh Ainsley, a co-founder of the group Color in Tech, questioned whether changing people’s skin tones was the best course of action because some people would object out of racism.

“We cannot move in this direction. We need to build tolerance.”

The issue, according to Mr. Ainsley, is not with those with an accent, but rather with those who believe it is appropriate to abuse call centre employees.

Instead, he argued that more should be done to ensure that linguistic diversity is acknowledged and that racism is not permitted.

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