Call recording consent and your AI receptionist

The short answer

Say it up front. Telling callers at the start that they’re speaking with an AI and that the call is recorded is a common way to seek consent. Canada’s privacy regulator also expects you to say why the call is recorded. Whether it’s enough depends on the laws where you and your callers are; ask your lawyer.

Canada

Criminal Code. Recording a call is lawful when one person on the call consents. When your business records its own calls, that person is you.

PIPEDA. A recording is personal information, so private-sector organizations need consent to collect it. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says to tell callers the call is recorded and why. A caller who continues after hearing that has given implied consent. This applies whether the customer or the business places the call, and to outside companies that handle calls for a business.

If a caller objects, the Privacy Commissioner expects you to offer another way to deal with you. Your call flow can offer a callback from your team, or another way to reach you such as email.

Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia have their own private-sector privacy laws, and health information is also covered by provincial health privacy laws such as Ontario’s PHIPA. A clear notice at the start of the call is the starting point for all of them.

United States

Federal law allows a call to be recorded with one party’s consent, and most states follow that rule. About a dozen states require everyone on the call to consent, including California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. When a call crosses state lines, the stricter rule can apply: California’s Supreme Court has applied California’s all-party rule to calls recorded in another state. A business that takes calls from more than one state should give the notice on every call.

AI raises one more question. In California, lawsuits have argued that an AI company processing a business’s calls is a third party listening in. In February 2025, a federal court allowed one such case against an AI contact-center provider to go forward (Ambriz v. Google). A notice that names both the AI and the recording helps, but it may not settle that question; ask your lawyer.

The FCC’s 2024 ruling that AI-generated voices count as “artificial” voices under the TCPA is about robocalls a business places. Answering calls people make to you is a different situation.

What 365vox does on every call

• Says it’s an AI receptionist and that the call is recorded, in the first sentence. This can’t be turned off.
• Lets you say why the call is recorded, in your own words
• Puts callers through to a person or offers a callback when they ask, by your rules and hours
• Keeps recordings and transcripts only for the retention period you choose, up to 30 days, encrypted at rest, with access to recordings in your portal logged
• Doesn’t use your calls to train AI models, and our contracts don’t allow our providers to

A sample greeting

“Thanks for calling Lakeview Dental. I’m the practice’s AI receptionist. This call is recorded and transcribed so we can handle your request. How can I help?”