New Delhi: In a bid to protect customers from spam and fraud calls, telecom major Bharti Airtel on Monday announced two new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spam detection features in its ongoing offensive against spam, as it expanded detection coverage to international calls and SMSes and introduced spam alert display in ten Indian languages. The move of the telecom giant is to nullify the growing and alarming trend of spam calls originating and being funnelled through international networks into India by fraudsters.

The company, however, said that once Airtel intensified its efforts to combat domestic spam calls, scamsters and spammers resorted to exploiting foreign networks to funnel fraudulent calls into India. “This alarming trend resulted in a 12 per cent increase in overseas spam calls in the last six months,” Airtel said in a statement.

“Following the launch of its AI-powered spam detection tool that flagged over 27.5 billion calls as spam to its customers, Airtel today announced the introduction of two significant enhancements aimed at staying ahead of spammers. Customers will now receive spam alerts for calls and SMS messages in their preferred Indian languages,” it said, adding that this new feature would be available in nine vernacular languages, with plans to add more in the future.

Further, Airtel’s AI-powered tool will now screen and alert customers to all spam calls and SMSes originating from international networks. However, the company expects to nullify this growing challenge with its new feature. “Customers and their feedback are at the heart of everything we do. After carefully analysing customer feedback, we have enhanced our solutions to better serve the linguistic diversity of India,” said Siddharth Sharma, director marketing and CEO connected homes, Bharti Airtel.

The upgraded AI-driven spam solution will now notify users about calls and messages from domestic and international numbers in ten Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, Punjabi and Telugu. “Additionally, with the growing volume of spam traffic shifting to foreign networks, the company has decided to expand its AI-powered tool to scan all SMS messages and phone calls originating from international numbers,” Sharma added.