Walmart, Delta, Chevron, and Starbucks Use AI to Monitor Employee Communications

Major US employers such as Walmart, Delta Air Lines, T-Mobile, Chevron, and Starbucks, along with European brands like Nestle and AstraZeneca, have turned to the seven-year-old startup Aware to monitor conversations among their rank-and-file employees, according to the company. This was reported by CNBC.

Jeff Schumann, co-founder and CEO of Aware, says that artificial intelligence (AI) helps companies “understand risks in their communications” by providing real-time insights into employee sentiment, eliminating the need to rely solely on annual or quarterly data or time-consuming special studies.

Using anonymized data in Aware’s analytics product, clients can see how employees in specific age groups and geographic regions respond to updates in corporate policy or marketing campaigns, Schumann adds.

According to Schumann, dozens of Aware’s AI models, designed to analyze text and images, can detect harassment, bullying, discrimination, non-compliance, pornography, nudity, and more. The company’s CEO emphasizes that Aware’s main tool cannot identify individual employees by name. However, a separate solution called eDiscovery is available for extreme threats or risky behavior as defined by the client, and it can identify individuals if necessary.

Aware stated that Walmart, T-Mobile, Chevron, and Starbucks use its technologies for risk management and compliance, which accounts for about 80% of the startup’s business.

Walmart, T-Mobile, Chevron, Starbucks, and Nestle did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment regarding their use of Aware’s tools. AstraZeneca and Delta Air Lines confirmed they only use the eDiscovery solution.

Jutta Williams, co-founder of the nonprofit Humane Intelligence, notes that AI adds a new, potentially problematic aspect to insider threat programs, which are designed to assess issues like corporate espionage.

Schumann notes that Aware, founded in 2017, has seen its revenue grow by about 150% per year over the past five years. The startup’s client companies have an average of 30,000 employees. Major competitors of Aware include Qualtrics, Relativity, Proofpoint, Smarsh, and Netskope.

Aware confirmed to CNBC that it uses corporate client data to train its machine learning models. According to the company, its data storage contains about 6.5 billion messages. After a client connects to the Aware system, the AI models require about two weeks to learn from employee messages and understand the emotional and sentiment patterns within the company.