Following the announcement of the partnership with Microsoft on May 22 during Microsoft Build conference, Truecaller has released a feature that will allow users to create a completely digital version of their voice. The feature will make use of the Personal Voice technology from Microsoft Azure AI Speech and it will be available to users with access to Trucaller Assistant.
Truecaller is the early access partner for Personal Voice. Additionally, a working demo for this new feature has just been showcased at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle. While setting up the new Personal Voice feature from Microsoft Azure AI Speech in Truecaller, users will need to record a few seconds of their own voice.
In mid-2022, Truecaller introduced an AI-powered in-app digitial assistant to screen phone calls. It greatly helps the phone owner to who called them and decide to answer or hang up the call.
Now, the company has announced a new feature that enables Truecaller Assistant speak in owner’s voice. It is powered by Microsoft’s Azure Artificial Intelligence (AI) Speech technology.
How to set up this feature?
Truecaller has rolled out this feature for a selected countries only for now and has plans to expand the same to the other regions too. But for now, the countries where the rollout has begun are India, USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Sweden and Chile.
Here’s how to add personal voice to Truecaller Assistant:
*It should be noted that the Truecaller Assistant is available for premium subscribers only.*
Step 1: Open Truecaller >> Settings
Step 2: Then, go to Assistant settings and tap set up Personl voice option and follow the instructions given.
To set this feature up, it requires updating the application to the latest version. And it also need a Premium subscription. After both these steps are done, open the Assistant settings in the app and follow the instructions to record and set up your voice.
In India, Truecaller premium subscription with Assistant option costs Rs 149 per month (Rs 1,499/year) and there is also a family plan (four members max) for Rs 299 per month (Rs 2999/year).
While the security concerns are still high here, Microsoft has implemented safeguards. These safeguards include automatic watermarks on AI-generated voices and a code of conduct that needs consent from a recorded individual and prohibits impersonation.
Amazon also has plans to offer a similar feature for Alexa on Echo smart speakers. During, the global AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning (ML) conference re:MARS 2022, Amazon revealed that it would allow users to train Alexa to mimic the voice of dead people
While some people were curious and excited to try the new feature, several others called it creepy.
Rise of Truecaller
Truecaller is developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, a privately held company with a head office in Stockholm, Sweden, founded by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam in 2009, but most of its employees are in India.
It was initially launched on Symbian and Windows Mobile on 1 July 2009. It was released for Android and Apple iPhone on 23 September 2009, for BlackBerry on 27 February 2012, for Windows Phone on 1 March 2012, and for Nokia Series 40 on 3 September 2012.
As of September 2012, Truecaller had five million users performing 120 million searches of the telephone number database every month. As of 22 January 2013, Truecaller reached 10 million users. As of January 2017, Truecaller had reached 250 million users worldwide. As of 4 February 2020, it crossed 200 million monthly user-base globally, of which 150 million were from India.
On 18 September 2012, TechCrunch announced that OpenOcean, a venture capital fund led by former MySQL and Nokia executives, were investing US$1.3 million in Truecaller to push Truecaller’s global reach.Truecaller said that it intended to use the new funding to expand its footprint in “key markets”—specifically North America, Asia and the Middle East.
In February 2014, Truecaller received US$18.8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, alongside existing investor OpenOcean, Truecaller chairman Stefan Lennhammer, and an unnamed private investor. It also announced a partnership with Yelp to use Yelp’s API data to help identify business numbers when they call a smartphone. In October of the same year, they received US$60 million from Niklas Zennström’s Atomico investment firm and from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
On 7 July 2015, Truecaller launched its SMS app called TrueMessenger exclusively in India. TrueMessenger enables users to identify the sender of SMS messages. This launch was aimed at increasing the company’s user base in India which are the bulk of its active users. TrueMessenger was integrated into the Truecaller app in April 2017.
In December 2019, Truecaller announced it plans to go public in an IPO in 2022. Truecaller also launched the Covid Hospital Directory keeping in mind the cases of corona infection in India. Through this directory, Indian users were getting information about the telephone number and address of Covid Hospitals.
Truecaller has reported an increase of 8 per cent in net sales in India in the first quarter (Q1) of the calendar year 2024, saying that the country accounted for 74.2 per cent of the total net sales. The daily active users (DAU) reached 314 million, out of which 234.4 million daily active users are based in India.
