Last week, WFH Alliance members gathered for a candid conversation with attorney Gregory C. Brown, Jr. on one of the fastest-evolving issues in customer service:
AI, privacy, and legal risk in customer interactions.

As contact centers rapidly adopt tools like voice AI, call summarization, and accent-translation technologies, the legal landscape is struggling to keep pace. Greg walked through several recent lawsuits and highlighted where organizations are starting to run into trouble.

A few key themes stood out.

Consent Is Still King

Across multiple laws and cases discussed, one principle kept surfacing:
consent matters, often more than the technology itself.

Whether it's recording calls, analyzing conversations with AI, or augmenting agent voices, organizations need to be thoughtful about how consent is obtained and communicated. In some cases that may involve call disclosures, while in others it may be addressed through terms of service, privacy policies, or other customer agreements.

AI Introduces New Questions Into Existing Laws

Many of the laws that apply today were written long before AI-powered contact centers existed.

That creates gray areas around questions like:

• If AI tools analyze or summarize conversations, does that count as “intercepting” the conversation?
• When voice technology modifies speech or accents, could that trigger telemarketing rules designed to regulate the use of artificial voices?
• If a vendor’s AI platform uses call data to improve its model, is it acting as a service provider or something closer to a third party eavesdropping on the call?

Courts are just beginning to sort these questions out.

Recent Lawsuits Offer Early Signals

Greg shared examples of emerging litigation where plaintiffs have challenged how AI is used in customer interactions. Some of the issues being tested include:

• AI systems that transcribe or analyze calls without clear disclosure to the caller
• Voice AI handling customer conversations without explicitly identifying itself as AI
• Vendors potentially using customer interactions to train or improve their AI models

In one case, the court dismissed certain claims—but left the door open for the plaintiff to return with more specific arguments. In another, a court allowed privacy claims to move forward based on allegations that an AI vendor intercepted customer conversations without adequate disclosure.

The takeaway: these issues are actively being tested in court right now.

Practical Themes Emerging for Contact Centers

While the legal landscape continues to evolve, several practical themes emerged from the discussion:

• Be transparent about who—or what—is handling the interaction
• Think carefully about how consent is obtained and documented
• Ensure privacy policies and terms of use reflect how technology is actually being used
• Regularly review how AI tools process customer data, especially as features change

As Greg put it during the session, keeping technology use within the “ordinary course of business” and maintaining strong documentation practices can go a long way toward reducing risk.

The Bottom Line

AI tools are creating powerful opportunities for contact centers—but they’re also introducing new legal considerations that leaders can’t ignore.

The organizations that navigate this best will likely be the ones that combine innovation with transparency, thoughtful governance, and strong vendor oversight.

And if this conversation made you think, “I wish I had been in that room,” that’s exactly why WFH Alliance hosts these small-group discussions—so leaders can learn directly from experts and peers as these issues unfold.

Check out more conversations like this: https://members.wfhalliance.com/virtual-calendar