Airtel launches AI-powered spam-detection tool, to be available from Thursday | Mint

Bharti Airtel Ltd on Wednesday launched what it calls India’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spam detection service that will become available to all its users free of cost from Thursday.

The tool, a potential rival to Sweden’s Truecaller smartphone application that identifies and blocks spam, will alert customers in real time to all suspected spam calls and SMSes. The service will get auto-activated for all Airtel customers without requiring the user to download any app.

“We believe our solution will be better than Truecaller or any other app or solution. This solution will stop the spam and prevent any potential scam or fraud that can happen through the spam call,” Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive of the company, said at a press conference.

The tool, which has been in the works for the past one year, has been able to identify 100 million potential spam calls and 3 million spam SMSes originating every day, and blocked 2 million spammers.

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“Designed as a dual-layer protection, the solution has two filters—one at the network layer and the second at the IT systems layer. Every call and SMS passes through this dual-layered Al shield. In 2 milliseconds, our solution processes 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls every day. This is equivalent to processing 1 trillion records on a real-time basis using the power of Al. Our solution has been able to successfully identify 100 million potential spam calls and 3 million spam SMSes originating every day. For us, keeping our customers secure is a burning priority,” Vittal added.

Real-time tracking

The Al-powered solution will classify calls and SMSes as “Suspected SPAM,” and will analyse various parameters such as the caller or sender’s usage patterns, call/SMS frequency and call duration, among several other things, on a real-time basis. By cross-referencing this information against known spam patterns, the system flags suspected spam call and SMSes accurately.

The software also alerts customers to malicious links received via SMS. For this, a centralized database of blacklisted URLs and every SMS is scanned on a real-time basis, to caution users from accidently clicking on suspicious links.

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Vittal said that the service would be available for smartphone users from the 387 million subscribers Airtel has, and that the company is working to extend the solution for its feature phone users as well.

Vittal said that to prevent genuine callers from getting blocked, for instance, callers from Swiggy or Zomato, Airtel has written to all telecom operators to share business-to-business data. He added that Airtel was willing to share data of spammers with the department of telecommunications and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for penal action against offenders.

While Trai and the telecom department have cracked down on spam, consumers continue to face this nuisance. Telecom firms have blocked a large number of connections following mandates from the government, but spam has now begun to originate from OTT apps such as WhatsApp.

“We can’t do anything about spam on OTT apps. For that, they have to be brought into some kind of regulation,” Vittal said.