In Japan, SoftBank’s ‘emotion-cancelling’ AI filter aims to protect workers from angry customers

The technology dramatically reduces the intonation of the angry comments, but retains enough to allow call-centre staff to respond appropriately

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A woman walks in front of a SoftBank store in Ginza shopping district in Tokyo. File photo: AP

Published: 11:51am, 14 Jun 2024Updated: 12:40pm, 17 Jun 2024

Japanese tech giant SoftBank Corp. is easing the worsening problem of “customer harassment” with the development of voice-altering phone technology that employs AI to make even the most irate callers sound serene.

According to the Tokyo-based company, the aim is to reduce soaring stress levels among call-centre operators who are having to deal with sharp increases in unhappy customers losing their temper.

SoftBank engineers have been working on the “emotion-cancelling” system for three years after one employee, Toshiyuki Nakatani, saw a television programme about the verbal assaults that many staff had to put up with.

“We developed ‘emotion cancelling’ in response to the social issue of customer harassment of call-centre staff and to protect them,” Nakatani told This Week in Asia.

The technology is a two-step process, according to Nakatani. It starts by using AI voice-processing technology to identify a caller who is angry, and then extracts the key features of his or her comments. The second step is to “incorporate the acoustic features of a non-threatening voice to produce a natural and calm tone of voice”, Nakatani added.

A customer walks through a shopping gallery in Tokyo, Japan, on June 7. Photo: EPA-EFE

The AI was required to recognise more than 10,000 items of voice data, with 10 male and female actors hired to deliver over 100 common phrases with various emotions. That included shouting, accusations against the telephone operator and demands for apologies.