Wednesday's Audio Startup Krisp said it will launch a new feature that uses AI to change user accents during calls. The company initially deployed support to change the Indian English accent to US English.
According to the startup, the accent conversion process simply saves the speaker's voice and switches phonemes to match the American accent. This feature has been clearly tested in an enterprise environment, with a beta version appearing on the Krisp desktop app. Users can flip through features at any time on a call or before a call.
The company's co-founder, Arto Minasyan, said the idea for the feature stems from the problems he faced in the conversation. “Even though I speak English well, many people don't understand my accent. I thought changing the accent would help people understand each other better. I started working on this issue two years ago.
However, when this reporter tested its functionality, the edited audio did not sound natural and sometimes missed a few words. The company believes these obstacles are beta releases and says the model will improve over time.
Krisp claims that when testing features in companies, sales conversion rates rose 26.1% and revenue per book increased 14.8%.
Image credit: krisp.ai
The company said it decided to first tackle India's accent, as people in the country make up a large part of the global workforce in the STEM field. There are plans to add more accent support, including the Philippines.
Other startups like GV-backed Sanas are deploying similar technologies in large call centers.
The company says it trained the model with thousands of audio samples covering a variety of accents and dialects, and used the conference assistant data after obtaining user consent.
Minasyan said another advantage of this feature is that it creates real-time speaker profiles, so there is no need to train users' audio in advance.
Krisp, which last raised capital in 2021, will be releasing its iOS and Android apps this year to support face-to-face meetings. There is also a new Chrome extension to improve integration with Google Meet.