Call recording consent for AI agents, state by state

If your AI agent records calls, or your platform does it for you, announce it at the start of every call, on every call, and make sure the announcement itself is in the recording. Do that and you satisfy the strictest state rules without having to know where the caller is. Most of this guide is why that one sentence is the answer.

Two more things: tell callers it's an AI, and if the agent places calls, get consent before it dials. Both are covered below.

Federal law lets a call be recorded when one party to it consents. The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d), makes it lawful for a person "to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication where such person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent," unless the recording is made to commit a crime or a tort. Your business is a party to calls to its own number, so under federal law your consent is enough.

The states can be stricter, and about a dozen are. Because a caller can be in any of them whatever number they dial from, a business with an AI on the phone has to plan for the strictest.

These states require the consent of all parties to record a phone call, in the words of their own statutes. Several also say what counts as consent, and those are the ones to build to.

Treat these as all-party too

• Nevada. NRS 200.620 allows interception with one party's consent only in an emergency, and the state supreme court (Lane v. Allstate, 1998) has read the statute to require all parties' consent to record a phone call.
• Delaware. Its wiretap statute (11 Del. C. § 2402(c)(4)) reads as one-party, but a separate privacy statute is read by many as requiring all parties. Announce, and the question goes away.
• Vermont. No recording statute; its courts have found privacy protections in some settings. Announce.

And these split by how you're talking

• Oregon. ORS 165.540 requires consent of at least one participant for a phone call, but all participants must be informed for an in-person conversation. For an AI on the phone, one party is enough.
• Hawaii. One party in general, with a stricter rule for devices installed in a private place. Not a phone-line concern.

You can't tell where a caller is. Area codes travel with people, calls come in from cell phones, and your platform's caller ID may be blank. So the question isn't "which state is this caller in?"; it's "does my agent satisfy the strictest state on every call?"

The strictest states tell you how, in their own text. Connecticut accepts "verbal notification which is recorded at the beginning" of the call. Washington says consent is obtained when one party announces the recording and the announcement is recorded. Montana wants the knowledge of all parties. California's rule turns on a "confidential communication," which a caller can't reasonably expect once they've been told it's recorded, and Massachusetts only forbids secret recording. An announcement at the top of every call, kept in the recording, meets all of them at once.

The announcement should be the agent's first sentence, before any question. "Hi, this is the AI assistant for Bright Dental. This call is recorded. How can I help?" A caller who stays on has consented under every statute above; a caller who objects should be offered a person, or a way to continue without recording if your platform can do that.

Where recording happens without you deciding

Most voice platforms record by default, and some keep transcripts even with recording off. Check what yours keeps, where, and for how long, and treat a transcript as a recording for consent purposes: it's the conversation, written down.

A separate question from recording, with its own rules, and the same answer: say it in the first sentence.

• California makes it unlawful to use a bot to communicate with a person online "with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity" to sell them something (Bus. & Prof. Code § 17941). Disclosure is the defense, and it has to be "clear, conspicuous, and reasonably designed to inform." That law is written for online bots; the safe reading for a phone agent is the same.
• Utah's Artificial Intelligence Policy Act (2024, amended 2025) requires a clear disclosure that a person is talking to AI when they ask, and up-front disclosure in some regulated professions.
• Other states are passing AI-disclosure rules year by year. A first-sentence disclosure satisfies every version we've seen.

It also removes a whole class of complaint: nobody can say they were tricked into thinking it was a person.

On February 8, 2024 the FCC released a declaratory ruling (CG Docket No. 23-362, adopted February 2) confirming that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's restrictions on "artificial or prerecorded" voices "encompass current AI technologies that generate human voices." In the ruling's words, such calls "require the prior express consent of the called party" unless an emergency or an exemption applies.

The FCC's rules (47 C.F.R. § 64.1200) then add the specifics:

• Calling a cell phone with an artificial voice needs the called party's prior express consent.
• Telemarketing with an artificial voice needs prior express written consent, and the message must identify your business at the start and give a phone number where do-not-call requests are honored.
• Calling hours: no telemarketing before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in the called person's local time.

So an outbound AI agent needs a consent record for every number it dials, a do-not-call check, and a clock. See the pumping problem for what happens when it dials numbers it shouldn't.

1. First sentence, every call: it's an AI, and the call is recorded.
2. The announcement is in the recording, not just in the script.
3. A caller who objects can reach a person.
4. You know what your platform records and keeps, including transcripts, and for how long.
5. Outbound: consent on record per number, do-not-call honored, calling hours enforced, written consent for anything that sells.
6. Someone re-checks the state list once a year.