Truecaller adds a new AI feature to detect and block more spam calls
Caller ID app Truecaller today blocks between 38 billion and 40 billion spam calls annually for its 374 million+ users. Now, in hopes of getting more people to sign on to its premium tiers, it’s turning up the dials on its filtering tech. A new “Max” update for Android premium subscribers uses AI to block every call that doesn’t come from an approved contact or that its AI determines might be spam, even if they’re not already listed on Truecaller’s database. Previously, blocking and other actions were guided by how numbers were listed on that database, combined with an individual’s proactive screening.
The update is Android only: Apple does not allow Truecaller (or other caller ID services) to check callers’ spammer status to block calls automatically on iOS. Thus, Truecaller has a more basic service for iPhone users based around CallKit.
The moves come at a critical business moment for the company. In Q4, Truecaller saw a 4% year-on-year revenue dip on $41.52 million in sales. Meanwhile, in India — Truecaller’s biggest market, with 259 million users — the Indian telecom regulator recently proposed a Truecaller-like caller ID service, to be implemented across all telecom networks in the country, in a bid to better tackle spam. For now, the proposal has seen opposition on privacy and technology grounds, but if put in place, it would pose a direct competitive threat to Truecaller.
The new feature underscores how Truecaller believes there could be a business opportunity banking on people fed up with spammers’ insidious ways — even if a fix could come at the expense of missing calls from unknown numbers and non-spammers that might actually be welcomed.
Truecaller is also leaning on the current interest in all things AI: Caller ID and spam protection are Truecaller’s two core features, and it’s betting that any reservations about AI could be outbalanced by curiosity about how well it could work to get Truecaller’s main job done … while also growing premium sign-ups in the process.
The app’s premium tiers range between $9.99 per month and $99.99 per year, depending on factors like number of users covered.
The new feature is also a signal of how Truecaller is playing around with ways to bring in more proactive automation — and subsequently expect less proactive engagement from users themselves. Truecaller has always offered subscribers a list of all the calls it can potentially block, which includes international, hidden, and unknown numbers not listed in a user’s contacts. But to get the best out of the app, users have to engage and tweak their own lists. Now everything ID’d as iffy will be blocked by default.
