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Baidu fights robocalls with its own robot
The robot answers spam calls and sends you a report on the conversation
This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Tired of spam robocalls? Baidu is now going to fight fire with fire using its own anti-spam robots.
Baidu AI Cloud has joined with Best Tone, a company under state-owned telecommunications service provider China Telecom, to launch an AI-powered bot that handles robocalls. The bot answers calls, chats with callers and then sends you a report through SMS or WeChat about the conversation.
The service called Tianyi Zhineng Xiao Baitong (“Tianyi Intelligent Little Know-It-All”) relies on Baidu’s voice recognition technology and will cover more than 200 million China Telecom users, according to local media.
Spam calls are just as big of a problem in China as they are in the US. During this year’s annual CCTV show dedicated to Consumer Rights Day on March 15, one company claimed that it made more than 4 billion calls a year.
Baidu isn’t alone in trying to fight spam calls. Alibaba launched its own bot called Husky, which takes a more unique approach. This robot will chat with cold callers and waste their time by prolonging conversations. (It actually ended up hanging up on us.)
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