Airtel to use AI to crackdown on spam calls, messages in India

Airtel reveals a plan to take on spam calls: Bharti Airtel is all set to roll out artificial intelligence enabled technology on its network to crackdown on spam calls and messages, company Managing Director and CEO Gopal Vittal said on Wednesday.

The technology will be rolled out at midnight starting September 26, which will alert users about probable spam calls and messages.

"There are several indicators based on which we have identified spammers. We have developed an AI-enabled spam detection solution which analyse calls in 2 millisecond and alert users on dialler," Vittal said.

He said that the solution will be rolled out free of cost for all Airtel smartphone users.

"In 2 milliseconds our solution processes 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls every day. Our solution has been able to identify 100 million potential spam calls and 3 million spam SMSes originating every day," Vittal said.

The technology will not block the call on its own but it will be for users to decide on blocking calls, as sometimes there are 'false positives', which means even genuine calls get displayed as spam.

He said that the solution will not be able to help users getting spam calls on over-the-top apps like WhatsApp. "It is one of the pain points (spam calls on OTT apps) which we have not been able to address," Vittal said.