Robocall

A robocall is a call placed by an automated system (auto-dialer) that plays a recorded message the moment the line answers: telemarketing, political push, fake-advisor scams. In the US, the phenomenon reached industrial scale — billions of calls a year — and fed general distrust of unknown numbers. Since 2024, the FCC considers a message generated by an AI voice and broadcast automatically to be a robocall, under the same legal regime.

The distinction that matters for an honest business: a robocall is an unsolicited, massified call with nobody on the line. A confirmation text sent to a customer who called you, or an AI agent that answers and converses one-on-one, is the exact opposite — responses to a request, individual, conversational. Confusing the two plays the spammer's game: it pushes your customers to stop answering anyone, including you. Hence the importance of calling from an identified number and responding where the customer initiated the exchange.