Robocalls with AI voices to be regulated under Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the agency says. I’m pretty sure this puts us on the timeline where we eventually get incredible, futuristic tech, but computers and robots still sound mechanical and fake.
Robocalling isn’t inherently bad. Utilities and such institutions that have your membership (library, gym, health care etc) should be welcome to use robocalling to notify you of useful info like emergencies or changes to their schedules. It’s just the political ads, scams, and sales that need to be made illegal and punishable.
Those scenarios would be better handled through email or text message. Nothing that should be handled by a robocall is urgent enough to warrant disturbing people with a phone call, it should just be text or email.
An actual emergency call, requiring your immediate attention, should absolutely not be handled by robocalls. If it doesn’t require immediate attention, then a call is not necessary.
Personally I want fewer text messages coming up on my mobile. I give a lot of places the landline number precisely to avoid them.
So you want to replace the 1-10 sms messages with robocalls? You want to receive 1-10 calls a day that is literally one-two lines of text?
They go to the landline which I ignore most all the time. Plus I don’t get 1-10 calls a day. If I did. I would definitely want to not be bothered by them coming in on my mobile.
You want them to make texts they already send a robocall instead. These are literally your words. And since you never answer your landline by you own words, you never actually receive the content they’re sending. Why wouldn’t you instead rather they didn’t do either (sending automated texts and robocalls)?
I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that I want them to send texts. I don’t want unnecessary messages on my mobile phone, since it’s with me all the time, where I feel more compelled to look at it. I would rather they send a voicemail to my landline and I can listen to the message when I feel like it. Most of the time I’m working on my computer and I can hear the voicemail being recorded in the background, and that’s all I need. By using the landline I’m offloading relatively unimportant stuff away from the more distracting device, the mobile.
-an elderly neighbor on his frustration with membership text messages from the aquarium
An organization being welcome to use something doesn’t mean it’s necessary for them to do it!
What do you think about national emergencies triggering automated calls to landlines?
Well that is something that could require immediate action for your safety, so it could make sense. We have a nation-wide civil defense siren system where I live for that kind of stuff, which I believe is a much better solution than cold-calling people who may or may not even be within range of their land line.
Since we have mail and text messages, robo alli g shlould be outlawed by Geneva Convention.
Thanks for that…
The thing is, at this point, I’ve been so conditioned to ignore those kinds of calls, and immediately hang up if I accidentally pick one up, that I would probably miss the legitimate calls as well.