Maine's AI disclosure rule reaches a phone, and it says so

Most AI disclosure rules were drafted with chat windows in mind, and it shows in the wording. Maine covers talk that is written or spoken, and that one word pulls voice into scope. A firm using an AI to answer its phone in Maine is using an AI chatbot in trade, as the law puts it.

The test is whether a normal shopper could be misled into thinking they are dealing with a person. Sit with that, because it is the exact thing many vendors here advertise. Copy promising an assistant nobody can tell from a person is describing the very thing the law makes actionable.

We do not write that sentence about our own product for that reason, among others. An assistant that announces itself is not a weaker product; it is a product that has read the rule.

The law gives you an out if the caller is told clearly. On a phone call the natural reading is that the notice comes first, before the caller has said anything that matters, and in words a person actually follows.

A line like this is what most businesses use: you are speaking with an automated assistant for the practice, and I can book appointments or take a message. It takes about three seconds, and it tells the caller both that it is an AI and what it can do for them.

A buried notice is the failure here. A line on your website, or one at the end of the call, or a mention in terms nobody reads, is hardly clear to a caller who has spent two minutes thinking they reached a person.

It means less than the alarmed reading suggests and more than the dismissive one does. Maine applies to trade or commerce in Maine, so a business elsewhere is not automatically inside it. If you take calls from Maine consumers, ask your counsel how that applies to you.

The wider point is which way this is going. Maine and Utah landed on disclosure duties within a year of each other, by different routes, and the FCC has a proposal in the same area. Building on callers not knowing they reached software is building on ground that moves one way.

The answer is the same either way. Turn the notice on. It costs three seconds. From writing these greetings, we find callers who know give cleaner details, because they use the short plain sentences people use with a machine rather than the rambling ones they use with a person.