AI is being trained to recognise Cork accents and has become an everyday tool for almost half of Irish adults, according to new research.
The Cork accent is one of three identified in a survey – along with Donegal and Kerry – as being difficult to understand, data compiled for Vodafone shows.
Research compiled from interviews with 1,000 people on behalf of Vodafone Ireland by Coyne Research shows that AI has become an everyday tool for 48%, rising to 66% among Gen Z.
Three in five survey respondents cited difficulties in understanding Cork, Kerry, and Donegal accents, with the result that Vodafone’s AI-powered TOBi assistant is being specially trained to recognise regional dialects and local expressions, from ‘banjaxed’ to ‘acting the maggot’.
Interestingly, one in three people believe AI can understand Irishisms, such as ‘grand’ or ‘c’mere to me’ – though ‘banjaxed’ (60%), ‘sucking diesel’ (59%) and ‘acting the maggot’ (52%) were named the most confusing for both AI and people alike to understand.
Gen Z, one in four of whom use AI daily, and Dublin residents are the most confident that AI like TOBi is catching on to these Irishisms.
‘TOBi isn’t just a chatbot,’ said Ciaran Barrett, commercial operations director at Vodafone Ireland.
‘TOBi helps our customers every day by giving them fast, intuitive support any time of the day or night- whether they want to check a bill, query a charge or top up their account.
‘TOBi learns from every interaction, adapting to how Irish people speak and what they need. This is AI made useful, not just clever… getting smarter, faster and more helpful all the time.
‘While TOBi is still learning to understand every accent and irishism, it absolutely gets what our customers need and is fully supported by our team of care specialists as well as the largest retail footprint in the country – giving our customers real choice in how they connect with us.’
Two in five consumers (40%) now claim to have a good understanding of AI technology, evidence that awareness of AI is growing rapidly.
Confidence is even stronger among men, with nearly half of males (48%) believing they have a good or very good grasp of what AI can do.
The development of TOBi is part of Vodafone Ireland’s broader €10million investment in enhancing services for its 2.4million customers.
The company now solves 80% of customer queries on the first try and has seen calls drop by half over the past three years, as customers have fewer reasons to contact Vodafone.
