- NEW DELHI — Bharti Airtel on Monday announced two major upgrades to its
AI-based spam detection tool to protect users from spam calls and messages.
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- The telecom company will now alert customers about
international spam calls and SMS messages.
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- In addition, users will receive spam alerts in their
preferred Indian languages -- making it easier for people across the country to
understand and respond to these warnings.
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- This new feature will be available in ten Indian languages,
including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu,
Punjabi, and Urdu.
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- Airtel said more languages will be added in the future.
Currently, the alerts in regional languages are available only for Android
users.
Also read: Centre issues alert about online booking scams impersonating pilgrim services
- The move comes after Airtel noticed a worrying trend. While
the company’s spam detection tool had successfully reduced domestic spam,
scammers started using foreign networks to make spam calls to Indian users.
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- This led to a 12 per cent increase in international spam
calls over the last six months. The latest upgrade is aimed at stopping this
new threat.
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- Airtel’s AI-powered tool, which was launched in September
2024, has already flagged more than 27.5 billion spam calls.
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- That’s equal to identifying around 1,560 spam calls every
second. Since its launch, Airtel customers have also experienced a 16 per cent
drop in spam calls.
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- Siddharth Sharma, Director, Marketing and CEO Connected
Homes at Bharti Airtel, said that customer feedback played a big role in
bringing these changes.
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