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

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 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.

The technology does not change the caller’s words, but the intonation that the words are delivered with is dramatically toned down. The caller does not hear his or her words after they have been altered.

A high-pitched female voice, for example, automatically becomes lower in tone to be less resonant. A booming male voice, on the other hand, which could sound intimidating, is raised in pitch to sound softer.

The developers had ensured that not every element of anger was eradicated entirely, the company said, so that phone operators could understand the situation they were facing and respond appropriately.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has announced that it is planning a local ordinance designed to stop customer harassment, banning “abusive and unreasonable demands that harm workplace environments”.

The drawback is that the ordinance will have no punishments.

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