On Monday, Apple released new software that will enrich the lives of iPhone-donning journalists everywhere—and anyone who needs to make sure they get the exact details of a conversation right: a built-in call recording system. The new feature, simply dubbed Call Recording, allows users to record a phone call by clicking a button. From there, the system will alert the recipient that recording has started by saying, “This call will be recorded.” This doesn’t appear optional—if you record, the other people on the line will be notified.
This isn’t by any means an original idea. Each year, I pay $89.99—a disgusting amount of money—for a service called TapeACall. It lets me record calls by conferencing in a third-party number. After I hang up, the app processes the call and lets me email myself a recording of it and an A.I.-generated transcript if I so please.
There are ethical and anticompetitive concerns about obliterating independent developers operating wholly within your walled-garden ecosystem. But beyond that, the legality of recording calls is never simple.
(Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication of this article.)
Federal law is focused on preventing wiretapping, mandating that at least one party to the call knows that it’s being recorded. (That’s called one-party consent.) There are exceptions, according to Jonathan Peters, a media law professor at the University of Georgia. “Federal law also forbids a participant from secretly recording a conversation for the purpose of committing a crime or a tort,” he told me. “For example, making a recording for the purpose of blackmailing or threatening someone with the recording.” And if the call is being broadcast live—or recorded and then replayed on a broadcast—the caller must be notified.
But 11 states, including California and Florida, have more stringent recording laws than the federal government. These are two-party—also called all-party—consent states. They mandate that every single participant of a call agree to the recording in question. “Most states with two-party consent rules permit ‘inferred consent,’ in which the party receives notice that the conversation is being recorded and chooses to proceed,” Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told me.
In other words, most of these states don’t require verbal consent of the person being recorded. With its auto-notification system—unlike other call-recording apps like TapeACall—Apple’s new feature seems designed to meet inferred consent requirements, he added.
It can get complicated when people are recording across state lines. “If a woman lives in Georgia but has an Ohio cell number and is on vacation in California, and she receives a call from a man in Vermont, and she wants to record their conversation, which law applies?” Peters noted.
Jennifer Nelson, a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, conducts legal training with journalists. She said she’s not certain that Apple’s notification is sufficient to satisfy all-party recording laws. “In my newsroom trainings, I always advise journalists that the best course of action in an all-party consent jurisdiction will be to get the affirmative consent of all parties on the call prior to recording,” she said. “This can mean asking for consent, starting the recording, and then reconfirming on the recorded portion of the call the fact that everyone has agreed that it is OK to record.” Better safe than sorry.
After an hour of updating my iPhone to iOS 18.1, I placed two calls to test out the system. First, I called my editor, Tony Tran, on his Android. Then, I called my mother on her iPhone. On each call, I pressed a button in the top-left corner to initiate the recording, then the participant and I both heard the message: “This call will be recorded.” Nothing else appeared on either of their screens.
When we were done, I had a very high-quality recording and, after a minute, a medium-quality transcript in my iPhone Notes. (There were some mistranscribed moments, and you can imagine that if the speakers involved have accents—not to mention speak in languages not supported by Apple’s transcription system—that will increase the number of errors.)
Venzke expressed concern that the AI transcripts might be sent out to OpenAI, which has a partnership with Apple. The company, which makes ChatGPT, is integrated into some of the new Apple Intelligence features, such as Siri, but the Call Record feature appears to be entirely Apple’s proprietary model at play.
Apple’s Call Recording looks like it will save me money by potentially ruining a third-party app I rely on. But even if Apple is offering this product for free, it’ll make back money in another way: With all of these local recordings and transcriptions, my monthly iCloud bill is absolutely bound to go up.
