Truecaller plans to bring its artificial intelligence-powered call assistant to India that will allow users to see who is calling and why on the screen and even filter pesky scam calls.

“We have developed an AI-powered assistant that helps us on our mission to avoid unwanted and spam calls. What Truecaller does now is tell the user who is calling and then the user can take the decision to take or reject a call. Going forward there will be an AI-powered assistant that will answer the call on your behalf. This feature is already launched in the US both on Android and iOS and in 2023 we hope to launch it in India,” said Rishit Jhunjhunwala, managing director and chief product officer, of Truecaller India.

According to Truecaller, if a user declines or does not answer a call, it will be forwarded to the AI-powered assistant which uses voice-to-text technology. When the caller responds to the assistant, the user will be able to see who is calling and why on the screen.

Jhunjhunwala said that given the diverse nature of languages in India and with mixed languages often used in calls, it is a big challenge that is being worked out by the Truecaller team using machine learning and natural language processing.

Truecaller cur rently has over 240 million users in India and has seen significant growth driven by smartphone and data adoption and the proliferation of digital services.

Trai move

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has proposed to introduce KYC based caller identity system and a consultation paper has been floated on the introduction of calling name presentation in telecom networks.

Jhunjhunwala said that the regulatory authority’s move sheds light on the importance of the issue amid rising instances of scams and impersonation.