AI call centres are reshaping a small Indian city

A decade ago this small south Indian city lived on one thing: answering customer-service calls from around the world. Today most of those calls are picked up by an AI voice agent that understands twenty-odd accents and rarely slips.

For the city’s young people that is both a threat and an opening. Some have lost entry-level jobs; others have moved into training and supervising the AI systems — better paid, but far fewer in number.

The local government is making a bet: to rebrand the place from "call-centre city" to "AI operations city." Whether that transition works will shape tens of thousands of households.