Would You Trust AI to Fix Your Relationship?

Hi everyone,

I had a friend in senior school who picked up a side hustle in a call centre for the experience and some money. He was trained in several accents, like Australian, American, British etc, depending on what ‘processes’ he got assigned. He needed them since he was assisting corporate customers in far away lands like the United States, United Kingdom, and other parts of the globe. Oftentimes, people on the other end of the line could hear through the trick. Back in school, he flaunted his ‘foreign accents’ garnished with a strong Indian flavour. It was amusing. It was fun. And, after all, it made it human.?

But it’s 2025 now, and artificial intelligence wants to keep things polished. Excuse the ‘human’ equation, if you will.

This week, Teleperformance - the world’s largest call centre operator - rolled out AI that “neutralises” Indian accents for Western customers. Powered by a startup called Sanas, the system smooths voices into a globally palatable sound while scrubbing away background noise and - some might say - the human touch. On one hand, it promises clarity. On the other, it raises a quiet, uncomfortable question that’s constantly buzzing in my mind: What do we lose when we erase the quirks that make us… us?

And if AI is reworking how we sound, it’s also reshaping (or optimising?) how we perform. Just ask the Columbia University student who built an AI tool that fed him real-time solutions during coding interviews, helping him land offers from Amazon, Meta, and TikTok. Of course, the clever hack ended in controversy when companies found out, and charged him with cheating. At this point, I have another question for you – as an AI user, where do you draw the line?

AI is blurring the lines though. In one of my previous newsletters, I mentioned how a new study claims that AI can replace human therapists. To give you a quick recap, the study, published in the journal PLOS Mental Health and led by Ohio State University and Hatch Data and Mental Health, involved the participation of 830 participants -- about half men and half women with the majority of them being in a relationship. It found that artificial intelligence (AI) could help individuals mend their romantic issues just like a traditional therapist.

But why am I revisiting this?

Because of this recent story where a couple, Dom Versaci and Abella Bala, based in the US, credit ChatGPT for saving their relationship. They mention using it as a neutral, judgment-free mediator to settle fights and offer communication tips. "ChatGPT is weirdly helpful for de-escalating fights, neither of us want to argue back and forth with a robot," Ms Bala said. "Therapy is expensive, and sometimes you just need a neutral third party to tell you who's being insane," Mr Versaci added.

While AI is making it easier to get several jobs done, it is also putting additional pressure on the job market. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is telling his team to work harder. With competition heating up in the race to dominate AI, he’s urging engineers to clock 60-hour weeks and "turbocharge" efforts to stay ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Microsoft. The future of AI might be about efficiency, but the people building it are being pushed to the limit.

So here we are: AI is changing the way we speak, the way we work, the way we get hired, and even how we stay in love. But as it polishes the rough edges and streamlines the chaos, I keep going back to my first question - in all this perfection, what happens to the parts that made us human?

Let me know your thoughts.

Until next week,

Aaqib Raza Khan

Deputy Editor –?Content Innovation,

NDTV