New artificial intelligence program can remove accents from voices bay white startup wants to make

 New AI program will take away accents from voices

A startup company based mostly out of geographic area known as Sanas plans to use AI (AI) to switch the voices of employees in decision centers to get rid of their accents.

The company's demo options the voice of a person with associate degree Indian accent, reading through a center script in a very simulated client interaction. facultative the slider on screen to use Sanas' technology seamlessly switches from clearly human audio to a processed version that finds itself within the uncanny natural depression. The voice continues to be perceptibly synthesized, however the Indian accent is gone and replaced with a additional Americanized or "white" accent.

Sanas launched in August 2021 and has already received massive amounts of funding, with $32 million in funding secured throughout a Series A funding spherical in Gregorian calendar month 2022. The company's founders, 3 former students of Stanford University, claim the funding is that the largest quantity ever place towards a speech technology service. the corporate eventually needs to supply additional voices for its accent translation, expand to ever-changing voices throughout video and audio calls, and doubtless even work on films or tv shows.

"We don't desire to mention that accents square measure a retardant as a result of you've got one. they are solely a retardant as a result of they cause bias and that they cause misunderstandings," Sanas president Marty Sarim told SFGATE.

Sarim maintains that if employees don't desire to use the technology, they'll merely flip it off. However, Winifred Poster, a prof of social science at Washington University in St. Louis, World Health Organization has extensively researched center employees, argues that decision center employees would be unlikely to possess even that degree of autonomy, as they already browse from a strict script and square measure raspingly surveilled.

"There is nearly nothing within the labor method of decision centers that involves selection by the employees in terms of technology," aforementioned Porter.

"All they need the authority to try and do is browse a script, right? Customers square measure attending to be mad at the corporate, despite World Health Organization the traveller is," Porter continuing.

You can browse additional from SFGATE's interview with Sarim and Porter here.