In today’s bleak times where Bengaluru suffers from random power outages, this new initiative by the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) and Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Ltd (BESCOM), will bring a glimmer of hope in the lives of numerous frustrated citizens.

Bescom officials are currently working with the Machine And Language Learning (MALL) Lab at IISc to develop an artificial intelligence-powered voice bot to attend customer calls.

A BESCOM official told a noted daily, “IISc has been working for many years on machine learning and natural language processing and we are using their expertise and knowledge to design a voice robot, which will be capable of answering some basic queries of the consumers in Kannada and English. The voice bot, which will be powered by AI, will have the capability to register complaints of consumers and direct them to the right departments for further queries… The induction of the voice bot into Bescom’s customer care system is expected to fasten the process of logging and redressal of complaints.”

The work of developing and integrating the voice bot with Bescom’s helpline number is expected to be kicked off within six months from when tenders for the project are called.

BESCOM in August had announced its intention to sign an MoU with the IISc and IIM-B to enable knowledge sharing and capacity building.