Real-time accent-altering technology: The message is clear, and it is dehumanizing

Over the past decade, the voice and speech recognition industry has established itself as a multibillion-dollar global market, but at whose expense? In this forum article, we scrutinize the case of Sanas, a US-based company offering an AI-powered accent-modification technology that is tailored for the off-shore call center industry. We offer this critique through a virtue-based framework for AI ethics. Our commentary exposes Sanas as an agent of racial commodification and linguistic dominance, as it rests on the perceived superiority of standardized US English. We discuss how racial commodification enables capitalism. Sanas, and similar programs, are not helping build a more understanding world; it is helping perpetuate and maintain harmful raciolinguistic ideologies that maintain language discrimination and continue to frame the language practices of racialized speakers as deficient. Thus, we write this piece with the intent to expose the fabricated humanity of accent modification technology whose existence perpetuates capitalism’s reliance on dehumanization for economic advancement and the legacy and reproduction of white language superiority.