#268 Thordur Arnason on Why Capgemini Is Building an AI Speech Translator

Thordur Arnason, Global AI GTM Lead at Capgemini Invent, joins SlatorPod to talk about how the consulting giant is embracing language AI through BabelSpeak, its new real-time AI speech translation platform.Thordur explains that the idea emerged from Capgemini’s AI Futures Lab while researching multimodal AI. Inspired by Meta’s launch of the Seamless M4T model, the team set out to tackle the hard problem of live AI speech translation.He notes that early pilots with DNB Bank, the Norwegian Red Cross, and the Norwegian Police tested BabelSpeak in critical situations — from refugee banking access to emergency communication.Thordur highlights Capgemini’s partnerships with Nvidia and Telenor, saying Nvidia provides the AI hardware and models, while Telenor’s sovereign AI infrastructure ensures security, GDPR compliance, and data sovereignty.He emphasizes that BabelSpeak’s reliability comes not just from AI models but from engineering precision, reducing latency from three seconds to under 300 milliseconds.Thordur discusses Capgemini’s exploration of agentic AI, where autonomous systems perceive, reason, and act independently. He describes how the company built an “Agentic Workbench” to help non-technical users experiment with AI agents safely and sees BabelSpeak as a potential tool within larger agentic systems.He concludes that Capgemini is expanding BabelSpeak into a broader suite of language tools, combining secure AI infrastructure with advanced multilingual communication for enterprise and government clients.