[c7b]

I don't like it. It's inevitable, but no reason to cheer it on. I find it similar to Google Mail or YouTube autotranslating content without opt-in (and sometimes opt-out). It's continuing a trend of you can't really trust the content you see is the content someone else sees or what they sent. It says it only changes accents, soon it'll filter swear words and what else? The end game for the legal use of such tech is always injecting ads. And with this particular tech, we know that the legal uses will be a negligible fraction of the real uses.

[armchairhacker]

> The end game for the legal use of such tech is always injecting ads

From GP

> Almost every time I get a call from TELUS about a new service or promotion

I’d hate to see accents removed in movies and e.g. YouTube review videos. But sales and customer service have lost their humanity long ago. At least the call center workers will receive less bigoted hate and hard-of-hearing customers will be less confused.

[QuantumGood]

Things I can do to help someone understand me are, generally, a net plus. Same for someone trying to help me understand them. But this has complicated effects, some surely unforseen.

[b112]

It's also going to be a landmine. First you can't force ToS on support calls, although I've seen companies try. If a company has charged you erroneously, for example, by no means do you have to adhere to their terms to resolve such an issue. The very notion is absurd, both ethically and legally, and no recorded message telling you so holds water.

My reason for mentioning this, is that there are going to be weird bugs in any such system. Systems hallucinate. Misunderstand words. I can see accent removal meaning that different words are the result, and context can mean those different words could be a disaster. This immediately opens up liability, because it doesn't matter if it was a computer, a human, or who, a company is on the hook.

It also doesn't matter if another company is providing this service, your contact is with Telus. Telus may sue their company, but you're going to go after Telus. A company could agree to all sorts of things without meaning to, make fraudulent statements, and yes they are liable and always have been. That also includes hate-crime related legislation, harmful insults, snide comments, and here's the fun part...

The person on the other end doesn't even know what they're saying to the person. Not accurately. This is supposed to be seamless, so they'll think that what they're saying is coming through correctly. And continue talking.

Yes, humans can do all of these things. But often there's a manager walking around the room, listening, and would hear someone raising their voice, yelling at the end-user, swearing, making inappropriate statements. This would stand out.

Yet here we have a system altering what's being heard, and no one is directly in the loop on that. No manager. No person on the floor.

Frankly, I hope this explodes in their face. Hard. I want to see them sued so hard, that no other company tries to ever interfere with human conversation again. Go full AI? OK. Full human? OK. But this nonsense???

Absolutely not.