AI Disclosure

The short version

Every call Sona answers opens by saying that you are speaking with an AI assistant. If you ask whether you are talking to a person, it is instructed to tell you plainly that it is an AI. You can ask for a person or to leave a message instead of talking to the AI, and you can decline to be recorded; what happens next depends on how the business has set up its line. Sona is not an emergency line: if you have an emergency, hang up and dial 911.

Who this page is for

Sona is an AI receptionist made by Bizefy LLC. Businesses use it to answer their phones: it answers questions, books appointments, takes messages and passes the call to a person when that is the right move. This page is for the people who call those businesses, and for businesses deciding whether to use it. How the personal information involved is handled is in our privacy policy.

What you hear first

Every call opens with a disclosure before anything else is said. For example:

Businesses write the words around it, but not the disclosure itself: our system will not activate a receptionist whose greeting leaves out the AI disclosure, and there is no setting, plan or support request that removes it. The recording notice works the other way round: it is played when the call is actually being recorded, and left out when it is not, because announcing a recording that will never happen is its own kind of misleading.

If you ask, you get a straight answer

Whatever words you use to ask whether you are talking to a person, a robot or an AI, the receptionist is instructed to say that it is an AI assistant, not a person, and to carry on helping. That instruction comes from us and is added after the business's own instructions, so a business cannot switch it off. Like any AI, it can misunderstand a question; if an answer ever seemed evasive, tell us at legal@bizefy.dev.

You can say no

• “I don't want to talk to an AI.” Say so, and ask to speak to a person or to leave a message for one. What the receptionist can do next depends on how the business has set it up: it may be able to transfer you or take a message so someone calls you back. You can also hang up at any time and contact the business another way.
• “I don't want to be recorded.” The receptionist is instructed to stop the recording (it is stopped at the telephone provider, not just hidden) and carry on, or, if the business prefers, to take a message instead.

What Sona is built not to do

• Claim to be human, or dodge the question when asked.
• Claim professional credentials, or give medical, legal or financial advice. It handles administrative tasks: appointments, messages and answers the business has published.
• Take payments or card numbers. It is instructed never to ask for card or Social Security numbers and to stop a caller who starts reading one out. Please do not share them on a call.
• Identify anyone by their voice. There are no voiceprints anywhere in the platform.
• Place outbound calls. Sona answers; it does not dial.
• Send text messages, to anyone.
• Share details of an appointment unless the caller is calling from the number it was booked with and gives the name it was booked under.

The voice is synthetic

Sona speaks with synthesized voices from licensed text-to-speech providers. Some sound very natural; none of them is a live person, and we do not offer voice cloning.

Mistakes, limits and emergencies

Speech recognition and language models are good and imperfect. Sona can mishear a name on a bad line or phrase something awkwardly. It is instructed to confirm details before booking, to answer from the business's own information, and to offer a message or a transfer when it does not know. The business can read the transcript of every call.

Sona is not an emergency service and cannot contact 911 for you. If you have an emergency, hang up and dial 911.

What is recorded about the disclosure

For every call, the platform keeps the text of the greeting that was actually played, alongside the call's transcript, so the disclosure can be shown later.

Your conversation does not train our models

We do not use calls to train AI models. The language-model providers the receptionist runs on are used through their business APIs, and they are listed on our sub-processors page.

The rules we build to

Rules for AI calls differ from state to state: some states require everyone on a call to consent to recording, California requires bots to identify themselves, and Utah requires generative AI to say so when asked. Rather than keep a different version for each state, Sona behaves the same way on every call: it discloses up front, answers honestly when asked and announces recording whenever a call is recorded.

Questions

About this page: legal@bizefy.dev. If you called a business that uses Sona and want your call deleted, ask that business; the privacy policy explains how, and privacy@bizefy.dev reaches us if you cannot reach them.