California voice AI call laws
California is an all-party (two-party) consent state: under CIPA (Penal Code § 632) everyone on a call must be told it's recorded, with criminal and civil penalties. California also requires bot disclosure in some commercial and political contexts under the B.O.T. Act, and is adding more AI-transparency laws. Federal TCPA rules apply on top. Verify current rules with counsel.
What makes California different
California stacks three separate statutes on top of the federal baseline, and a single AI call can touch all of them. CIPA, the California Invasion of Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 632), has made recording a call without every participant's consent both a crime and a civil cause of action since 1967. The B.O.T. Act (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17940-17943), effective July 2019, requires disclosing that a bot is being used in certain commercial and political contexts. And the CCPA (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.100 et seq.) governs the personal information sitting in your recordings and transcripts.
The consent rule
Recording consent is all-party. Everyone on the call must be told it is being recorded, and because an AI agent typically records by default for transcription, the disclosure belongs in the first spoken turn of every California call. On cross-state calls the safe practice is to follow the stricter state, which for California traffic means disclosing to everyone.
The AI-disclosure angle
Under the B.O.T. Act, a bot used to incentivize a sale or influence a vote in covered contexts must be disclosed. One plain opening line can carry the recording duty and the bot duty together: name the company, say the caller is an AI assistant, and say the call is recorded. Our tracker seed also notes that California treats voiceprints as biometric data under CIPA, so voice-cloning enrollment flows deserve specific counsel review.
Penalties
As of this writing, our dataset cites CIPA criminal exposure of up to a $2,500 fine and six months in jail per violation, alongside a private civil right of action, with B.O.T. Act violations surfacing as unfair-competition claims. Federal TCPA statutory damages of $500 per call, trebled to $1,500 for willful violations, stack on top of state exposure. Verify current figures with counsel before relying on them.
How PyAI Trace maps to California
No tool makes you compliant, and PyAI Trace does not claim to; it helps you enforce and prove the policy you and counsel set. A rule pack checks every California call for the consent line and the bot disclosure, PII redaction keeps personal information out of stored transcripts, and a tamper-evident audit hash is written per call. On PyAI Omni agents, the consent_line field in the configure frame speaks your disclosure before the conversation starts, and Trace verifies it happened.
Statutes
| Law | Citation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| B.O.T. Act | Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17940-17943 | in effect · 2019-07-01 |
California AI Call Compliance Checklist
- Obtain all-party consent before recording any call
- Disclose the bot's artificial nature at the start of the call
- Keep a tamper-evident audit trail of consent and disclosures per call
On top of Californialaw, the federal TCPA and the FCC's 2024 ruling treating AI/cloned voices as an “artificial or prerecorded voice” apply to every call.
See the federal overlayPrimary sources
- California CIPA, Cal. Penal Code § 632
California's all-party recording-consent statute (criminal + civil).
- TCPA, 47 U.S.C. § 227; 47 CFR § 64.1200
The federal consent/robocall regime that applies in every state.
- FCC Declaratory Ruling (FCC 24-17, Feb 2024)
AI-generated and cloned voices are an 'artificial or prerecorded voice' under the TCPA.
- California B.O.T. Act, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17940-17943
Requires disclosing a bot in some commercial/political contexts.
Seed entry, pending counsel verification. Treat as a starting point, not a legal conclusion.