The technology that makes you sound more American and whiter

"Now I have enabled the accent translation," he says. It's the same person, but he sounds completely different: loud and slightly nasal, impossible to distinguish from the accents of my friends in Brooklyn. Only after he had spoken a few more sentences did I notice a hint of the software changing his voice: it rendered the word "technology" with an unnatural cadence and stress on the wrong syllable. Still, it was hard not to be impressed – and disturbed. The man calling me was a product manager from Sanas, a Silicon Valley startup that's building real-time voice-altering technology that aims to help call center workers around the world sound like westerners.