Meet PEARL – The New AI Tool That Can Execute Customer Support and Sales Calls

Imagine a call center simply staffed by a fully automated AI system that cannot only engage in sales calls but even handle customer inquiries in the customer support sector. Though this might be far-fetched for some, this is what PERAL is promising to do.

In a LinkedIn post by Eric Vyacheslav, AI Engineer at Google, he introduces to the world, PEARL a fully automated AI that can perform 60 minutes calls. But that’s not all, according to the engineer it can handle any action needed to handle a call when dealing with a human on the other line.

In the post, Eric Vyacheslav also provides a three-plus minute audio of the AI in action. During the audio, you can hear the AI engage with a customer, and it’s quite difficult, if not impossible to tell that this isn’t a human speaking on the call.

When listening, PEARL AI comes off as if reading from a script, similar to humans in the position of a call agent. This includes asking questions, inquiring about details, and moving the conversation along with the person on the other side of the line.

Overall, it’s an interesting film to listen to because now naturally the conversation sounds quite telling of the work put behind this model. Since its posting last Tuesday, it has garnered a semi-viral status on LinkedIn. With over a hundred comments and almost a thousand reactions, PEARL has been given a pretty decent platform to show off.

The post about PEARL comes a few weeks after a startup laid off 90% of its call center staff in favor of an AI chatbot. Of course, with something such as PEARL on the horizon, this will only fuel the unease many are feeling toward AI as a significant disruptor in the labor market.

Even Goldman Sachs reported that generative AI is expected to affect hundreds of millions of jobs in the coming years. This has helped unleash calls from major players in data science, such as DeepMind’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, for some kind of policy solution for the possibility of significant workforce disruption.

Though regardless of the implications, PEARL seems to showcase yet another major step in how AI can play a role in many different industries. Its ability to process payments, take information, and engage with humans is a testament to the work put behind it.

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