Airtel Africa detects 205m spam SMS in 6 months with AI

Airtel Africa says its Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered spam detection service, Spam Alert, has detected more than 205 million spam SMS in 13 of its markets in the last six months.

Sunil Taldar, Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Africa said this in a statement on Friday.

He explained that the free service marked spam messages by adding the tag “SPAM Alert” and gives real-time updates, removing the need for customers to download extra applications to manage spam.

He said the service had been rolled out in 13 of the company’s 14 markets including Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Malawi, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Chad and Niger.

He added that Seychelles would launch soon.

Taldar said that during the review period, Kenya recorded the highest volume with 68 million spam messages flagged, Tanzania followed with 47 million and Zambia with 33 million.

Taldar said there had been a 12 per cent overall reduction in spam messages since the launch of the service, with Nigeria recording the highest drop of 84 per cent.

He said Airtel Africa is proud to pioneer an advanced solution to tackle spam messages, which had become a major concern in Africa as more people used smartphones.

“This free service is another demonstration of our commitment to continue to innovate and to provide customers with a safer network and better experience,” he said.

Taldar added that the spam alert service used AI to study SMS usage patterns and frequency of senders in real time before classifying a message as spam.