Moderating foreign accents using AI, A Conversation with Soundwave team, winners of the TiE Young Entrepreneur competition

These days you will often call into customer service for a company whose product you are using and will be connected to an agent with a foreign accent. For many Americans, this can be a challenging experience as they cannot understand what the agent is saying because of their accent. Foreign agents have also complained that it can be a dehumanizing experience. This can result in a low Net Promoter Score for the foreign call center which reduces the revenues they can charge for their services.

Soundwave is an AI application that moderates the accents of foreign call center agents. It works as the agent talks into their microphone. Then, their voice goes through an AI model in real-time and returns with a moderated accent. The caller hears the response in the moderated accent. 

The Soundwave product was conceived of by young high schoolers under the auspices of the TiE Young Entrepreneur (TYE) program. They won the TYE Globals finals in 2024.

TYE is a fantastic year-around program to guide high school students to create and launch their first real business. Students are guided through each step of starting an enterprise, from brainstorming the idea to developing a product prototype to pitching to investors. Classroom learning is blended with real-world experimentation and validation, to obtain product-market fit. This program culminates in the regional finals event being held this year and a global competition.

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