Investing.com — Shares in France’s Teleperformance (EPA:) plunged on Wednesday, reportedly on worries surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence developments on the call center company.

Citing two traders and an analyst, Reuters reported that the decline was connected to an announcement from Swedish payments group Klarna, who said that its OpenAI-powered automated assistant had handled two-thirds of its customer service chats.

In a statement dated on Tuesday, Klarna said the numbers were equivalent to the work of 700 full-time agents and “on par” with human workers with regards to consumer satisfaction scores. The AI technology, Klarna added, is projected to drive a $40 million profit improvement in 2024.

Teleperformance, which offers services like customer relationship management and content moderation, shed more than a fifth of its value in Paris trading, putting it on track for its largest one-day fall since 2022.

“The AI debate has raged on for Teleperformance in 2024, with fears around AI disintermediation continuing to weigh on broader [business process outsourcing] growth expectations and valuations,” analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note.