Marchex Adds AI to Clean Call to Help Businesses Block Robocalls

Marchex, a provider of call analytics, today announced that Clean Call, its robocall blocking solution, will be powered by new artificial intelligence-driven technology.

Adaptive robocall blocking, Marchex's latest advancement, uses a combination of artificial intelligence and voice biometric technology to prevent nefarious calls from clogging business lines. Clean Call technology dynamically identifies new robocalls as they occur and uses that intelligence to detect, classify, and block them. Clean Call already blocks millions of spam calls and robocalls every month, according to Marchex data.

"Though seen mostly as nuisances for residential and mobile phone customers, robocalls can significantly add to the cost of doing business across a number of multibillion dollar industries," explained Dan Miller, lead analyst at Opus Research, in a statement. "Marchex's Clean Call is an ingenious, adaptive service that combines elements of artificial intelligence with voice biometrics to detect and block both known and newly recognized robocallers. It is a potential game-changer."

In recent years, the United States has experienced a dramatic escalation of robocalls. According to YouMail, robocalls grew by nearly 57 percent in 2018, with an estimated 47.8 billion robocalls made in the United States, compared to 30.5 billion robocalls in 2017.

"We reimagined robocall blocking as an intelligent system that could adapt as robocallers changed tactics," said William Li, vice president of engineering at Marchex, in a statement. "This is a marked advancement over other products on the market, which block calls using cumbersome technology that cannot keep up with  fast-evolving robocallers. Marchex's Clean Call adaptive robocall blocking will be robocallers' worst enemy."