Caller ID application Truecaller today it blocks between 38 and 40 billion spam calls per year for its 374 million+ users. Now, in hopes of getting more people to sign up for its premium tiers, it’s turning the numbers on its filtering technology. A new “Max” update for premium Android subscribers uses artificial intelligence to block every single call that doesn’t come from an approved contact or that its AI determines may be spam, TechCrunch has learned, even if they’re not already registered to Truecaller’s database. Previously, blocking and other actions were driven by how numbers were entered into this database, combined with screening of the individual.
The update is only for Android: Apple does not allow Truecaller (or other caller ID services) to check the spam status of callers to automatically block calls on iOS. So Truecaller has a more basic service for CallKit-based iPhone users.
The moves come at a critical business time for the company. In Q4, Truecaller fell 4% year-on-year, on sales of $41.52 million. Meanwhile, in India – Truecaller’s largest market with 259 million users – India’s telecom regulator which was recently proposed a Truecaller-style caller ID service that will apply to everyone all telecommunications networks in the country, in an effort to better deal with spam. For now, the proposal has been seen opposition for privacy and technology reasons, but if implemented, would pose a direct competitive threat to Truecaller.
The new feature highlights how Truecaller believes there could be a business opportunity to do business with people fed up with spammers’ sneaky ways — even if a fix could come at the cost of missed calls from strangers numbers and non-spammers.
Truecaller also builds on the current interest in all things AI: Caller ID and spam protection are Truecaller’s two main features, and it’s a bet that any reservations about AI could be balanced by curiosity about how well it could work to make Truecaller the main business… while also increasing premium subscriptions in the process.
Premium levels of the app range between $9.99 per month and $99.99 per year, depending on factors such as the number of users covered.
The new feature is also a sign of how Truecaller is playing with ways to bring more proactive automation — and then expect less proactive engagement from users themselves. Truecaller has always offered subscribers a list of all calls it can block, which includes international, hidden and unknown numbers not listed in a user’s contacts. But to get the most out of the app, users need to get involved and modify their own lists. Now anything identified as non-existent will be blocked by default.
“It’s something that, at least, some people have asked for — people who understand the app very well,” Kunal Dua, vice president of search at Truecaller, claimed on a call.
This is not the first AI feature in Truecaller: it provides one AI assistant which screens the calls to determine why the caller called the user. (Other non-AI features include cloud telephony and call recording.)
The AI that powers Max has been in the works for some time. Truecaller tests “multiple dozen algorithms” in its marketplaces that identify spam numbers, and each of those machine learning algorithms also learns from user feedback, Dua said.
However, it would take a major change at Apple to make the service available to iOS users. Last year, Truecaller brought Live Caller ID support to iOS, though this is more limited and requires iPhone users to go through a process to set up Live Caller ID.
It will be interesting to see how users react to the full nature of a feature that can sometimes make mistakes. The app currently warns users that the feature “may block legitimate businesses.” However, the system is expected to improve over time as it receives more spam call data, Dua said.
“Obviously, we try to do our best to distinguish between unwanted and legitimate businesses. However, there may be some cases where some legitimate businesses may be temporary [blocked],” he said. “We like to think that it’s temporary before our community and before our AI algorithms recognize that this is a legitimate business… We have a lot of confidence that if we call someone a spammer, there’s a very, very high chance, 99,999 times out of 100.”
Users can unblock a number if it has been wrongly flagged as spam by machine learning algorithms, which also helps train AI.
After updating the Truecaller app to version 13.58 or later, users can find the new spam blocking feature by going to Settings > Blocking.
