Some say that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, yuA new Silicon Valley initiative Of course, he has hit three turns to the plot that ‘Sorry to Bother You’ presents us. In the movie of Boots RileyLakeith Standfield begins to succeed as a telemarketer when he begins to use his “target voice”, and now new software has managed to replicate this idea with artificial intelligence to achieve the same result.
No accents…or rather just an acceptable accent
‘Sorry to Bother You’ He showed us, as a comedy, a situation that is too real for many people: that they have more successful in their work environment when they use a voice register associated with white people.
healthy is a Californian startup that has created a technology that alters people’s voices in real time. A large part of the world’s call centers are located in India and the Philippines, and by using this software your accent becomes completely that of a white American.
This technology can save millions of dollars for certain companies, which are increasingly training their workers to have a neutral accent that is friendly and attractive to Western customers.
The protagonist of the film begins to go wonderfully when he uses this technique, but it also creates a feeling of discomfort with the fact that only a certain way of speaking is the one with which one can succeed. Unfortunately, it seems that the same thing happened to the co-founder of Sanas Sharath Keshava Narayanawho already worked in a call center in 2003 and suffered his doses of discrimination due to his Indian accent and even had to change his name to “Nathan” in order to enter into this mandatory “neutrality”.