T-Mobile Will Live Translate Regular Phone Calls Without an App (theverge.com) 22
T-Mobile is opening registration today for a beta test of Live Translation, an AI-powered feature that will translate live phone calls into more than 50 languages when it launches this spring.
The feature operates at the network level, so it doesn't require any specific app or device -- beta participants simply dial 87 to activate it on a call. T-Mobile President of Technology and CTO John Saw told The Verge that Live Translation works over VoLTE, VoNR and VoWiFi, meaning it isn't limited to 5G. The only requirement is that a T-Mobile customer must initiate the translation. The beta will be free, though T-Mobile has not said whether the feature will eventually be paywalled.
The feature operates at the network level, so it doesn't require any specific app or device -- beta participants simply dial 87 to activate it on a call. T-Mobile President of Technology and CTO John Saw told The Verge that Live Translation works over VoLTE, VoNR and VoWiFi, meaning it isn't limited to 5G. The only requirement is that a T-Mobile customer must initiate the translation. The beta will be free, though T-Mobile has not said whether the feature will eventually be paywalled.
I'm curious to see... (Score:3)
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Friend of mine got a message from a cow orker (Score:2)
So what language do people who ork cows speak?
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Re: I'm curious to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed this is highly suspect because it is absolutely the wrong layer to do this at. We are very close if not there already to being able to do TTS -> translate -> STT with in the power and compute envelopes on a handset.
Doing it there would make it super easy for the user to turn the feature on and off on the fly. Doing it there would make, privacy and legality concerns around recording and multi-party disclosure a lot simpler. There are a lot of other experiential and legal reasons it seems way
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Some phones already have the capability - iphone 15 and up for instance with the latest ios.
Doing it at the network level makes it available to any user regardless of what handset they have.
A service like this will probably announce (in both languages) that it's been turned on, so you're free to hang up if you don't consent to it.
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> Does AI transcription count as recording
No. Why would it if it's not actually saving the conversation?
If your argument is "But it's being stored temporarily in the system so that the transcription bot can do stuff", do you think that the phone network still works by connecting people directly via an electrical wire? The moment phone companies switched to packet switching some kind of temporary storage became normal. No courts ever intervened and had then done so they'd have sided with the phone compani
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How does one identify T-Mobile customers and refuse calls from them?
Well Dingus, there's already a bunch of AI apps people run on their phones that do this, so you might as well just throw it in the ocean and start writing letters. Or your manifesto.
aaaaand now... (Score:2)
yay?
In other words (Score:3, Insightful)
T-Mobile is openly admitting that they are listening to all your phone calls
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Yes, T-Mobile is openly admitting that their network is computerized and computers process the packets that get sent to and from phones.
You know. Like all phone systems have worked since the 2000s.
Or do you think this technology requires actual human translators to be translating the conversations? Because if you think that you seriously misread the summary.
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They are openly admitting that they have the ability to listen and record, and this shouldn't be a surprising revelation. A telco being able to route a phone call on their network past an extra hop isn't black magic. And we already know that nation state level actors spy at the telecom level.
So both the ability to and the practice of are already well established. So that someone offers a service that uses that ability isn't the part that is news.
Who's accountable when it's wrong? (Score:3)
When that happens -- not if -- who is accountable for the consequences? Including the real-world consequences, which could be quite serious?
I already know the answer to this question, without even looking, and the short version is "not T-Mobile", because there's no way their attorneys would let this through without a disclaimer so thorough that nobody can get past it. (I wouldn't be surprised if they spent more on the legalese than on developing the product.) This is today's business model: let's come up with something nobody asked for, ship it, and then disclaim all responsibility for the consequences of our choices and actions. If people get hurt or killed, wellllll that's just good business and it was their own fault anyway - now can we discuss this quarter's P/L statement and the new executive bonus package?
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Please refer to the contract of adhesion written on flypaper for the gory details. Look for who is the "accountability sink". Most likely is is the customer, as the company has applied a thick teflon coating with regards to accountability.
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It will be obvious that someone is using a translation service, so you take that into account when understanding what they said. The same thing can happen with regional variations of the same language, or people who are novices in a particular language.
If you translate a website and it says something unbelievable or out of context the first thing you do is assume the translation is incorrect, the same will happen here.
I've experienced this already (Score:2)
Yesterday I had to call someone as part of my job. Just a few sentences in, her phone started translating everything we said into Spanish. She eventually got it turned off, but it was a really strange experience.
Not all languages supported yet (Score:1)
AFAIK Klingon and Middle-Earth languages are mostly unsupported in the early rollout. Stay tuned.
Wowzers (Score:1)
Already doing this on voicemail (Score:1)