New Delhi: On Wednesday, Bharti Airtel took a proactive step in the fight against spam, introducing India’s first network-based, AI-powered spam detection solution. This marks a significant milestone in the country’s efforts to combat spam, providing reassurance to Airtel users and the general public.
The free solution, a first in the country’s telecom sector, will provide Airtel clients with real-time notifications of any suspected spam calls or SMSes, ensuring their security and peace of mind.
It will be launched automatically for all Airtel users without them having to submit a service request or download an app.
“Spam has become a menace for customers. Today marks a milestone as we launch the country’s first AI-powered spam-free network to shield our customers from the continuous onslaught of intrusive and unwanted communications,” said Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Airtel.
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Vittal said that the company spent the last 12 months solving spam and built the tool with “dual-layer protection”—one at the network layer and the second at the IT systems layer. The network layer protection involves real-time monitoring of all incoming and outgoing calls and SMSes, while the IT systems layer protection uses advanced AI algorithms to detect and block potential spam.
“Every call and SMS passes through this dual-layered AI shield. In 2 milliseconds, our solution processes 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls daily. This is equivalent to processing 1 trillion records on a real-time basis using the power of AI,” Vittal said.
Vittal noted that the tool has successfully identified “100 million potential spam calls and 3 million spam SMSes originating every day” so far.
Developed in-house by Airtel’s data scientists, the AI-powered solution uses a proprietary algorithm to identify and classify calls and SMSes as “Suspected SPAM”.
It analyses the caller or sender’s usage patterns, calls/SMS frequency, and call duration, among other things, in real time.
By cross-referencing this information against known spam patterns, the system accurately flags suspected spam calls and SMSes.
In addition, the tool also alerts customers to malicious links received via SMS. For this, Airtel has built a centralised database of blacklisted URLs, which contains a comprehensive list of known malicious websites. Every SMS is scanned in real-time by a state-of-the-art AI algorithm to caution users from accidentally clicking on suspicious links that match the entries in this database.
Airtel said the tool can also detect anomalies such as frequent IMEI changes, which are a typical indicator of fraudulent behaviour.
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–IANS
