The European AI regulation (AI Act, Regulation EU 2024/1689) has been in force since 2024 and its transparency obligations apply from August 2026. For anyone using an automated phone assistant the rule is simple: callers must know they are talking to a machine. Here is what it means in practice.
The transparency obligation
Article 50 of the AI Act states that AI systems intended to interact with people must be designed so that people are informed that they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the context.
A phone call with a natural voice is not an obvious context: the customer might believe they are talking to a person. That is why the assistant must say so at the start of the call.
What the assistant says
Every call starts with a line such as: 'Giulia Parrucchieri, good morning! I am Giulia Parrucchieri's virtual assistant. How can I help you?'. The disclosure is clear, short and does not put customers off: in our trial calls nobody hung up because of it.
The disclosure cannot be switched off: it is part of the service, and our terms say so explicitly.
Who is responsible
The AI Act distinguishes between the provider of the system (Rispondly) and the deployer (your business). Rispondly guarantees the system informs callers; the business must use the service as intended and not try to pass the assistant off as a person.
GDPR and call recording
The GDPR applies regardless of the AI Act. The call is transcribed to generate the booking: callers must be informed of this too, and the business's privacy notice must name Rispondly as processor. We give customers ready-made text to paste in.
The data collected by voice (name, phone, service, time) is the same the customer would give a receptionist. We do not ask for health or payment data.
What to do in practice
Use an assistant that always identifies itself as such. Update your privacy notice with the text we provide. Do not ask to remove the opening line. If a customer asks to speak to a person, the assistant transfers the call to you: that is already built in.