“We developed ‘emotion cancelling’ in response to the social issue of customer harassment of call-centre staff and to protect them,” Nakatani told This Week in Asia.
The AI was required to recognise more than 10,000 items of voice data, with 10 male and female actors hired to deliver over 100 common phrases with various emotions. That included shouting, accusations against the telephone operator and demands for apologies.
The technology does not change the caller’s words, but the intonation that the words are delivered with is dramatically toned down. The caller does not hear his or her words after they have been altered.
A high-pitched female voice, for example, automatically becomes lower in tone to be less resonant. A booming male voice, on the other hand, which could sound intimidating, is raised in pitch to sound softer.
The developers had ensured that not every element of anger was eradicated entirely, the company said, so that phone operators could understand the situation they were facing and respond appropriately.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has announced that it is planning a local ordinance designed to stop customer harassment, banning “abusive and unreasonable demands that harm workplace environments”.
The drawback is that the ordinance will have no punishments.
02:54
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“I’m dubious as to just how widespread or common it is, but any change from the rather docile, polite demands of traditional Japanese consumers is something of a major change,” he said.
“Consumers have always been highly demanding in terms of product quality and presentation, and very polite, attentive customer service was largely taken for granted across all of Japanese retailing and its hospitality industry,” he said. “I’ve seen some trace this back to historically overcrowded living conditions, even among the wealthy, and the need to fit in so as to maintain social order.”
With such high standards of service, the assumption had always been that it would be reciprocated by the customer, Larke said.
Asked why Japan might be witnessing this problem emerging now, Larke said he could only speculate as to a number of reasons, including high stress levels caused by inflation and “a certain amount of torpor, particularly among younger Japanese who too often feel some hopelessness about their futures”.
Other contributing factors might include increasingly aggressive and vocal discontent becoming commonplace on social media, depressing news from around the world and, possibly, the impact of increased numbers of “less tolerant and less understanding foreign tourists”.
Larke said it might be time for Japanese consumers to require less formality and reduce their expectations.
SoftBank’s system only works in Japanese at present, but the company has said it is considering developing versions in other languages for markets that require it. Initial systems should be available from April of next year, although no price has yet been set.