Would you stay on a sales call if you knew you were being recorded without consent?
I was on a call with a founder and they asked me to turn on my camera on Google Meet.
I said no citing that they have brought in the call recorder without my consent. I consent for voice recording and summarizing, not video capture.
He said he needed it.
I said no problem, in that case I will have to cancel and leave the meeting.
But that’s not even the interesting part.
What’s interesting is why I said no.
More and more people are joining calls with AI note-takers, silent recorders, or “meeting assistants”, often without explicitly stating it.
Even if you don’t “accept” the bot, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
If someone wants to record, they will... one way or another.
And that creates a weird imbalance:
You’re being recorded
You didn’t consent
You don’t know how that data will be used, stored, or shared
Now compare that with how companies like Apple handle this.
When you call their support:
They explicitly tell you the call is being recorded
They control the storage and usage of that data
And importantly, they don’t allow you to record freely. If you insist on recording, they can refuse service.
Clear ownership and consent structure.
But in B2B calls today?
None of that exists.
Anyone can:
Record
Transcribe
Feed your conversation into AI
Store it indefinitely
All without saying a word.
So the real question is: Should business conversations move toward explicit mutual consent like Apple support calls? Or is silent recording just going to become the default and everyone has to adapt?
Let me know in the comments what you think about this.

Replies
I think it’s probably going to end up somewhere in the middle. Silent recording might become more common technically, but there’s still a trust factor in business conversations that you can’t really ignore.
Explicit consent feels a lot more sustainable long term, especially if companies care about relationships and not just data. Otherwise people will just start assuming everything is being recorded and that changes how they communicate. Then you got this "OpenClaw" thing everywhere!...lol
I understand your point about the efficiency of recording business meetings.
However, my main concern is the lack of prior notice.
I'd appreciate it if you could let me know in advance or ask for my consent before the recording starts.
It’s important for me to be aware of it beforehand
hot take but the consent debate is kinda missing the point. the real problem isnt recording, its that most people on sales calls are performing anyway. camera on or off, recorded or not, youre still in "sales mode" saying things you think the other person wants to hear. the best business conversations ive had were the ones where both sides dropped the act, and whether a bot was transcribing that or not was irrelevant