Harassment calls escalate: AI robots can make thousands of calls every day, all year round

Reporter | She Xiaochen

While AI is changing the world, it is also fueling chaos in various ways, such as the harassing phone calls you often receive.

"Positive and enthusiastic all year round", "only 1/10 of labor costs". An AI customer service outbound call system company described the advantages of robot calls in its brochure. This sounds like a good choice – for cost and efficiency reasons, many companies are starting to market and return to consumers in the form of AI robots.

But for consumers, the advent of AI has exacerbated the antipathy to such calls. Data from consumer service platform Black Cat Complaints shows that there are as many as 2,264 complaints about AI phones. Some users reported that they received 5-6 AI calls from a shared bicycle company in one day, claiming to be the customer service manager of Haro, and the outgoing calls were all virtual numbers and could not be blocked.

AI phone robots mainly rely on intelligent voice interaction technology, mature technology in the hands of several head manufacturers, but there are many service providers in the market, enterprises can purchase system solutions from the latter. While harassing calls and spam messages have been somewhat cured in recent years, the advent of AI telephony bots has complicated the situation.

At the same time, some manufacturers have developed AI answering software to fight AI with AI. As a consumer, how do you say no to the robot on the other end of the phone?

There are many worries behind it

The procurement of AI phones has formed an industrial chain, but the structure is not complicated. Usually, after the enterprise purchases the AI phone robot, the service provider will build a system and background, as long as the mobile phone number is imported, it can automatically make calls and talk to customers. The most immediate benefit is to reduce costs and increase efficiency - human telemarketers can only call one user at a time, but AI robots can make calls to multiple people at the same time.

A number of respondents told Interface News that most of the AI calls they received came from finance, educational institutions, FMCG and operators, among which banks and operators had more frequent AI calls. In fact, most companies that use AI telephony bots reach a point where the advantages of AI telephony become apparent when they need to make calls to multiple users at the same time.

After all, AI phone systems are also a big cost. Interface News consulted a number of companies to quote and found that the price of an AI outbound call system ranges from 800-3000 yuan. A system with a price of 788 yuan, which supports 800-1000 calls per day; Another AI phone system with a price of more than 3,000 yuan can make 1,800 calls a day, and the system can automatically add WeChat.

Pei Zhiyong, director of the Qianxin Industry Security Research Center, told Interface News that most of the companies that use AI phones are large enterprises and will develop AI outbound systems on their own. The cost of developing AI phones by small companies is high, and there are not many general services on the market, and service providers with mature technology are still rare, which limits the popularity of AI phones to a certain extent.

Pei Zhiyong emphasized that AI phones can only be used for simple voice interactions, but real sales requires semantic analysis and sentiment analysis, for example, in sales calls, AI phones are far less than human levels and are easy to be recognized by users. For industries such as banking, insurance and educational institutions, they will choose to use AI phones for marketing due to the huge amount of promotion.

It is worth warning that while selling AI outbound call systems, service providers are very likely to peddle user numbers and invade personal privacy.

Interface News consulted an AI phone system service provider, and the other party said that the outbound call number came from two channels: one was the user number registered on the company's website, and the other was the "Mobai" number obtained from the data platform, which was often obtained through illegal means. Southern Metropolis Daily once reported that in order to attract customers, sales of AI phone systems said they could provide "local high-quality phone lists."

You Yunting, a senior partner at Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, told Interface News that according to Article 43 of the Advertising Law, no unit or individual may send advertisements to their homes, transportation, etc. without the consent or request of the parties, nor may they send advertisements to them by electronic information. Where advertisements are sent by electronic information, the true identity and contact information of the sender shall be clearly indicated, and the recipient shall be provided with a way to refuse to continue receiving it. Therefore, if a merchant pushes advertising messages to consumers who have no connection with them at all, it violates this regulation, and AI phones are no exception.

In addition, AI phone systems often enable automatic recording. Some service providers advertise that intelligent classification, sales analysis, etc. can be carried out through post-recording, which is also a non-compliant operation. You Yunting said that if the AI call is recorded directly without informing the respondent, it is infringing on the rights and interests of personal information.

Rejection of AI calls should be "both hard and soft"

Although AI calls seem to be more convenient for "harassing" users, in contrast to public perception, AI has limited impact on the proliferation of spam calls.

Pei Zhiyong said that from the perspective of communication management, AI phones can reduce the number of unwanted calls by limiting the frequency of calls. The reason is that the AI phone must also access the operator's authority to ensure that the dialed number is a real number, and some service providers will even advise customers to limit the frequency and wording. According to Interface News, regular service providers will require customers to submit the full name of the company when selling the system.

There is data that governance in recent years has improved the problem of harassing calls. In 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments issued the "Special Action Plan for Comprehensive Rectification of Harassment Calls", which clearly regulates harassment calls, carries out special rectification actions for harassment calls nationwide, and transfers them to normal governance in a timely manner. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the 12321 Acceptance Center received a total of 63,000 complaints from users about harassing calls, down 13.3% sequentially and up 2.8% year-on-year.

However, due to the increase in the number and efficiency of calls, AI technology still gives some enterprises and criminal gangs an opportunity.

In April 2022, police in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, arrested an online fraud gang involving many parts of the country. In this case, the criminal gang used AI robots to make 17 million calls and obtain more than 800,000 valid customer calls, attracting a large number of traffic to overseas fraud gangs. The 2022 CCTV 3·15 Gala also exposed the privacy and security issues behind the harassing calls, according to the reporter's unannounced interview, as long as the mobile phone user browses a web page similar to decoration and buying a house, the unscrupulous company can use technical means to make harassing calls to users.

When AI robots call consumers, some manufacturers have developed AI tools to defeat AI with AI. For example, China Unicom's voice intelligence service product "Wo Message" can realize the answering function, which will determine whether it is a harassing call based on the content of the call, and then make the next step. Alibaba and iFLYTEK have also launched AI tools to help users block unwanted calls and interact with AI.

From a consumer perspective, a combination of hard and soft may be a better approach.

Pei Zhiyong analyzed that some platforms are usually used for commercial outbound calls, and the final dialed number will be displayed as a special number, suggesting that consumers need to pay more attention when receiving a special number. In addition, he believes that whether it is artificial intelligence or human calls, as consumers, it is necessary to enhance the awareness of anti-harassment and anti-deception, and when it is not possible to judge whether it is a robot phone, he can say some more complex sentences to ask questions and identify AI calls.

He also suggested that when consumers receive the same AI call repeatedly, the easiest way is to block it and report it to the operator's customer service.