The awkward question
Short answer: PhonePick tells them the moment they ask, on every plan, and there is no setting that turns that off — so the question mostly does not arise. The longer answer is worth reading, because a lot of what is written about this is wrong.
It is what we found when we read the actual legislation rather than other people's blog posts about it. Rules differ by state and province, several are new, and more are coming. If the answer matters to your business, ask someone qualified — and if you find something here that is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
Search this question and you will find a dozen articles saying California requires you to disclose AI on calls, usually citing AB 2905. We read the bill. What it actually says is that a caller using an automatic dialing-announcing device must inform the person called if the prerecorded message uses an artificial voice.
That is a rule about outbound robocalls — machines dialling out and playing a recording at people. An AI receptionist answering a call that a customer chose to place to your business is a different thing, and AB 2905 does not appear to reach it.
Source: California AB 2905, approved 20 September 2024 — the bill text on leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Read it yourself; it is short.
This matters because most of the alarm written about AI receptionists borrows its authority from robocall law. The two are not the same, and being told you are breaking a law you are not breaking is its own kind of harm.
There are real rules, and they are narrower and more specific than the blogs suggest. Utah requires a consumer-facing bot to say it is generative AI when asked, and requires proactive disclosure for regulated occupations — licensed professionals and certified services — without waiting for the question. Maine and the EU also have disclosure obligations. There is no single federal rule in the US, though the FCC has proposed one.
The picture is moving quickly enough that any table of states published today is out of date within months, which is exactly why we have not published one. If you want certainty for your state, that is a question for a lawyer and not for a receptionist company's website.
It answers honestly the moment anyone asks whether they are talking to a machine. That is not a setting. There is no toggle for it, no plan on which it behaves differently, and no way for a customer to configure it away.
You choose one thing: whether it also announces it in the greeting, before anyone asks. Some businesses want that and some do not. Both are available; lying is not.
The reason is not compliance. It is that a receptionist which claims to be a person is one bad phone call away from being the story your customer tells about you — and the rules are only going to move in one direction from here.
It never invents a price. It never promises something your calendar cannot honour. It says it does not know rather than guessing. Those are not legal requirements anywhere we have found — they are just the difference between a receptionist and a liability.
PhonePick