Michigan's AI Calling Laws: What Businesses Need to Know

Michigan's new regulations prohibit using AI voices for B2B appointment setting beginning January 2025, with violations resulting in fines up to $1,500 per occurrence. Learn how AI is transforming podcasting while creating legal challenges for marketers and existential questions for content creators.

• Michigan businesses cannot use AI voices for B2B appointment setting starting January 2025
• TCPA requires prior written consent for AI-generated or pre-recorded voice calls
• AI calling assistants sound obviously robotic and frequently fail in real-world applications
• AI synopsis tools threaten YouTube watch time by condensing hour-long videos into 4-minute reads
• Car podcasting presents unique acoustic challenges requiring experimentation with microphone placement
• YouTube is beginning to crack down on repetitive, low-quality AI content

Thanks to our sponsors: the Michigan Renaissance Festival, Metro Trading Association, Networking with Kids, and Get Prepped video game. Join us at Networking with Kids at Jungle Java in Clinton Township on the first Thursday of every month from 4-6 PM.

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The thoughts and views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and do not reflect the official policy or position of Metro Trading Association. Although the host is an employee of Metro Trading, this podcast is intended to educate entrepreneurs on the benefits of professional trading, regardless of their location. Additionally, the host reviews various pieces of camping gear due to the association of trade, barter, and prepping.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Sponsor Shoutouts
• 3:48 Car Podcasting Setup Struggles
• 4:42 Illegal Sandpoint Well Adventure
• 7:07 Michigan's AI Voice Call Regulations
• 12:26 AI Killing Content Algorithms
• 25:42 Low-Quality AI Content Problems

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Welcome back to Trade Tuesday. I am your host, trader Stu, and I came across several things over the last week that I wanted to touch on and kind of give my feedback on, because it could be detrimental to the YouTube and podcast algorithms and the future of, I guess, social media in general, with AI both helping and also kind of destroying the whole situation. But first let me thank my sponsors, the Michigan Renaissance Festival, for bringing history, fun and community together all season long, so if you haven't been there yet, definitely make it a point to stop by. They are my newest, latest and greatest sponsor, of course, metro Trading Association, supporting local businesses and professional growth in Michigan. They are who, of course, I get my bread and butter from full-time job, and this Trading Post podcast was just designed to help explain it. Trade, and then it just kind of, of course, took off from there. Networking with Kids, my other sponsor that's my thing, I do that, that's mine. Helping families and professionals connect together and grow together. Networking with kids, my other sponsor that's my thing, I do that, that's mine. Uh, helping families and professionals connect together and grow together because you can bring your kids with you to your after hours networking events. We hold it at jungle java in clinton township on enterprise drive. If you're in the area, do stop by check it out, uh, first thursday of the month, from four to six, and it's uh you can get. You don't have to get tickets or register, but it's an Eventbrite meetup and alignable and, of course, get prepped. That's the video game that I will be in. It's empowering you to be ready for anything, personally and professionally, by providing you different synopsis and scenarios of end-of-the-world events and see how well you do, or did, with your preps. I can't wait for that game to get released.

Speaker 1: 2:17

I am probably a bit more what do you call it? Exposed or transparent than most, I guess. So I want to let you guys know the new situation I'm in. I'm just trying things out because if you are trying to do the business of business podcasting or just podcasting in general for your business, you're probably no professional. So here's a tidbit I am trying just to hold the mic in my car right now and I've seen podcasters do this. Actually, I've seen YouTubers do this Not so much podcasters, but they just hold a mic or they hold the mic off of their iPhone mic, but the DJI thing in my car I've noticed, I'm not satisfied with the audio quality because it sounds echoey, because I'm in my car and the windshield and the windows are not as acoustically well done as I had hoped for.

Speaker 1: 3:13

So instead of wearing it or wearing it on my hat, as I've done in the past, I'm going to try and use it as a microphone. I'm trying different angles and just seeing what's going on. So, anyway, I digress. Just a tidbit, and then also, by the way, first time I've ever used a paper for notes I think it's the first time ever, anyways I tried using it on my computer and or iPad or whatever, and it's just too cumbersome Not the iPad, but, like my computer, it's one of those yoga things. So it's still pretty thick, not user-friendly. So maybe I'll get one of those uh, what do you call those remarkable tablets that would be ideal for this situation, I think. Uh, to try and manage everything in my car, I really just need to get an rv man, you know, I should just maybe put in one of those. What do you call it? I'll get gofundmes, I guess, and try and get like a C so I can have a podcast studio, dude, because I would use it a lot, that's for sure, at any rate, let's get to it.

Speaker 1: 4:16

I wanted to go over some legalities. Not that I got any legal issues, because I did have the voice of reason of my father in my head and I'm like, you know what I'm going to do some background. So, I guess, background on background, two wall breaks, um, I was digging a sandpoint well in my backyard, trying to be a prepper and get my own water and just in case things went south and uh, he's like you better make sure you can do that and it's legal in Michigan. I'm like, nah, I looked it up and you know it's fine, you can get Sandpoint Wells in Michigan and you know something you can do about it. Well, come to find out after I nearly knocked myself out by using a post hole digger and it came off the pipe and down came the post hole digger on the top of my head and thank God I was wearing earmuffs with the plastic thing on top that went over your head. That saved my life, I think. I got a concussion and everything.

Speaker 1: 5:10

I went to the hospital, but I was like, well, I'm going to make sure that I really can just do this before I go through more work and more sacrifice and more pain and suffering, more blood, sweat and tears, I guess, and then find out that I'm going to get sued by the county or whatever, or my neighbors are going to report me, as they do with everything else that I do, because I'm kind of eccentric, and then I had to take it all out and also pay fines. Come to find out that I called a well diggers and I called the county and all that stuff and they said Sandpoint wells are in fact legal if they were grandfathered which my research did not say that specifically grandfathered in. Before some clause that came about I forgot what year. Well, any new sand point wells have to be treated such as a regular well now, where you have a concrete barrier and blah, blah, blah and has to go down so deep and this and that. So anyway, I quit doing it, because now I basically just have a fancy post for holding an umbrella in my yard. I didn't get down that deep, not at all, so I'm not nowhere within any kind of water line, you know, or whatever I don't. I think I got maybe one length down, you know, that's probably what a few feet. So I got a nice hole for if I want to do a flag and that's about it. So, anyway, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't breaking legal issues.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Even though you can buy it online doesn't mean that it's legal in Michigan, and sure enough, the voice of reason. January 2025, so? So just passed for the state of Michigan that you can no longer and cannot use AI-like voices for outbound B2B appointment setting, and it's heavily regulated. So I was using I mentioned on my last podcast, co. What was it called? I already dropped their name because they don't matter to me no more, and I bought credits for this AI assistant or agent that I can't use anyways. So I think it's called voiceio. It doesn't matter. I think it's called voiceio. It doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is, is any AI voices for trying to get appointments is illegal in Michigan up to $1,500 per occurrence.

Speaker 1: 7:44

Way you know, I'm on the dnc list and I get telemarketing calls all the time, but there's nothing I can do about it here. But here's what I found out. Actually, I forgot, I did research this they have to be based out of, out of the united states, so these places that you get these robo dialers are out of, like india, right, or pakistan. There's nothing we can do about it, apparently, but because I'm just a good god-fearing american trying to make it happen, you know I pay the price. So anyway, I didn't pay the price because no one reported me.

Speaker 1: 8:18

I only did like several test calls and uh, and it just doesn't work. General, you can hear the recording or the live situation and it's super cringy. It's not as awesome as you think it's going to be. I mean, it's every bit as robo-dialer as you think it is and you think that with AI it would be more lifelike and hard to tell the difference. It's not. So the Telephone Protection Act, the TCPA, requires prior expressly written consent for AI-generated or pre-recorded voice calls, even in B2B context. So when I was working for ADT and even the job I have now, the DNC list doesn't count for businesses Like you can't put yourself on that.

Speaker 1: 9:14

The problem is here's where you get in trouble is that a lot of business owners use their personal phones. So if the business line gets forwarded to a personal phone or cell phone and you call that, that's considered that's a hit, like that's a problem. And so you know there's some gray area here. But just err on the side of caution and just know what you're getting yourself into when you use this, like what's it called? Err is the other one that people are using to set their appointments, and it doesn't work. By the way, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it, you know, and I just thought that I could morph myself into seven different reps at seven different times and knock it out of the park. There's no easy button here, boys and girls.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Violations can result in hefty fines and lawsuits, so compliance is crucial for businesses. Yes, so of course, i'm'm gonna waste my credits. That wasn't much. I think I spent 30 bucks to try it out, but thank god, I just tried it. You know, get my feet wet, and that's why you do get my feet wet, because something like this happens, that they won't disclose, and they're like oh yeah, it's legal.

Speaker 1: 10:37

Now I did read that using a service instead of like designing your own system, where I think using a service like theirs does provide you a bit of shelter. According to what I looked up and read and researched, I'm sure there's a clause in the do you agree? Checkmark that we don't read in checkmark, that they, you know, surpass all legal limits, liabilities, obligations, and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, and they pass that back on to you. So it's not like they have an insurance policy like a contractor to where if you were to get sued, they would get sued because you're using their service. Somehow they got away from that. I'm sure they did. If they didn't, they would be dumb, I think. So you know, I guess you got to set your own appointments.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Anyway, let's see what else did I read here? So there's okay, yeah, so some nuances, right? So while it says that you know, while B2B rules are less strict in business to consumer the AI voice systems that you use, you must still follow all relevant laws and honor the do not call this. So when I was calling through ADT, we called through a service and if somebody asked to be put on the DNC list, then you hit like I think it was like pound nine or nine or whatever, and that was the DNC. You know, one was callback, two was callback, later three, it doesn't matter, but needless to say is that it wouldn't let you call, it scrubbed DNC lists, so it wouldn't allow you to call that number. So it was nice.

Speaker 1: 13:28

I don't have that and actually I don't even know why or how we got that with ADT, maybe because we had a consumer section, because you had residential and then you had business, so maybe we had all because we had consumers we had obeyed by the business or laws or consumers laws, I'm not sure, but anyway that's how we did it there and I don't understand this must have proper consent. Oh, you know what I think? When you sign up for newsletters and you check the like newsletter and follow-ups, I think that the ai automated follow-up is maybe like an option. Now to where, if you do consent to receiving, like you know, newsletters and emails and text messages or whatever that, I believe, is where is how you're getting consent from these people, these business owners? Because who would say, yeah, no, I'd love to be called by a robot. That sounds awesome. Definitely, get me signed up for multiple calls a day from AI. That doesn't happen. This does give ideas on alternatives and best practices. So, yeah, see this one. I don't understand the hybrid model.

Speaker 1: 14:51

So AI can screen leads or handle initial contact, but a human agent should follow up for the appointment setting. Now, I get these, we all. I think we all get these right. So this is when you get the phone call and you say hello and then no one's there, right, hello, hello. And then finally, like seconds later, which feels like a minute, someone picks up the line and they're like hey, hello, mr, whatever, blah, blah, blah, you know, and I see here and they try, and you know, as if they were calling you. I think that's this human agent that would be like a loophole. Now, that's a robodialer, though that's not an AI pre-screening me to ensure I want my gutter serviced or whatever pre-screening me to ensure I want my gutter serviced or whatever.

Speaker 1: 15:57

My whole thing was. I just wanted this AI agent just to make a phone call and say hey, would you like some more business through trade and barter? If you can handle some more business, I'll set you up an appointment through his calendar and then Bob's your uncle, you're done. But inevitably it never works like that. You know, nine times out of 10, when I call a business, you're not getting the business owner. Anyways, you're getting like, if you're at some restaurant, you're getting the hostess or host or whatever, or a bartender never the owner, that's for sure. And they're not going to take a message for an AI bot that's another for sure. And they're not going to say hold on, let me get the owner for you. So sometimes I had a couple people actually do that and I heard the recording and then the bot freaked out, didn't know how to respond to that and then just kept talking over them. It was super annoying. It's like you blew it. You blew it. Anyway.

Speaker 1: 17:00

This says use AI for data entry, crm updates and scheduling, but to keep the human touch for conversations. Yeah, I mean, if I can figure that part out, but really I don't need that. I don't understand how I can use AI for that part of it. I guess I need it for the other part, the time-consuming part, to cold call. But you know, here we are. At any rate, I just want to give you a little warning on that one, because I talked about it pretty highly and I was pretty excited about it and I hate to say as usual, but as usual the air got let out of my balloon and just felt deflated. So here we are anyway, all right. Next up, I wanted to talk about the AI, how AI is going to probably kill the algorithm and why is that?

Speaker 1: 17:53

Well, I have recently discovered synopsis mode on my. I use Perplexity. So I just use Perplexity because I get it for free from Xfinity. So some of the YouTubers are. I watch lot of, you know, gardening, prepping, whatever, military, all that stuff right. And so when I get these updates, these daily news articles, like um, I watch uh the day, uh daily prepper or prepper new. I watch prepper news.

Speaker 1: 18:28

He changed his name, he's a canadian prepper. Now he's on a new channel called prepper news. I like watching him. He's charismatic, he's a doomsdayer, he's terrible. Like um, the world is burning, you know, and I I love it. That's like my drama, dude. It never happens, nothing ever happens, but sometimes it does and it's exciting when the world burns for me, I don't know why, just real world problems, I guess, instead of like I don't know someone ordering the wrong drink in your group and then they get mad because they got a Diet Coke instead of a Coke. It's like dude, let it go.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Anyway, back to the synopsis. So I will just literally, if I only got time to listen to a whole video, or sometimes I'll play his YouTube content and use it as a podcast in my car, cause generally he's just got like a green screen behind him. That isn't really beneficial in any way for data, like for me to see. I don't have to see it to get the gist of what he's talking about. So I listen to a lot of YouTube videos in the car as a podcast. Anyway, if I don't want to do that and I'm time and this video is 48 minutes long, then I will just click the link, or I'll share it, or right click and copy paste it into perplexity and say give me the synopsis of this video. Perplexity and say give me the synopsis of this video, and within seconds it gives me everything he said and then gives it to me in a friendly like cliff note.

Speaker 1: 20:01

Uh, what do you call it? Was it the cliff notes used to get the books? I remember the books in school that you had to read. It was like mandatory reading, reading but and you couldn't watch the movie because the teacher would know you watched the movie because some things were different and they made sure they put things in the test that were for sure in the movie and for sure not in the book. So they'll know right away if you watch the movie instead. Anyway, that's how my school was. So instead I would find these, the cliff note versions and buy these things right, and it was the book whittled down to within, like I don't know, 30 pages, or 50 pages instead of 400 pages or whatever it was, so I would read that instead. So I do that with Synopsys now, and so instead of 48 minutes, I am spending four minutes. You know, by hyperlink, copy paste, let it generate and then read the several paragraphs that he talked about for the last hour. So, and I was like, oh my God, that's amazing. And then I was like, oh my God, that sucks.

Speaker 1: 21:07

What happens to all this watch time that YouTube is so dependent on? I think it's the same thing. That's like this SEO snake oil that's going down now, like SEO is no longer what it used to be, you know, because of AI. Well, so all this watch time is going to go down the tubes, man, and unless you want to sit there and have a coffee and watch the whole episode, which I do I mean I wake up at 3 in the morning, still 3.30. I'll turn on a doomsday or thing and listen to it, and as I have a coffee and a breakfast but you know, sometimes I don't want to do that Well, their watch times are going down the drain, dude, and it does it with podcasting too.

Speaker 1: 21:49

I copy and pasted my own episode into perplexity and it told exactly that it gave the sponsors, which I thought was really cool. Um, you know, say this, the podcast is sponsored by these people. Then it'll say here's what my intro was, here's what my data points were, or like, like my main points, here's all the sub points that we kind of went on tangents about, and then that was it. I finished it off with, like I think, maybe another shout out for the sponsors, and then that was it. It was awesome. And also, again, I was like dang it. So the whole point, you know, of talking is kind of gone now. So what are we doing? Are we going back to newspapers again, back to blogging, because you're going to read it anyways? I don't know.

Speaker 1: 22:41

I think there's an avenue out there for everybody, but I think it's cool that there's the option. It might not completely eliminate it, but it's there. It might not completely eliminate it, but it's there. So you know it definitely reduces your need to listen to the full episode, definitely impacts your listenership and engagement, definitely doesn't bother with the highlight reels, personalized recaps for listeners. So you know there's that. And then there's also the impact. If the synopsis becomes too good, then you skip directly to the summaries and then there goes the value for the long-form content that has been pressed for so many years by YouTube.

Speaker 1: 23:24

And now podcasting. Let's see what else. Now podcasting, let's see what else YouTube and podcast hosts, yes, may need to adapt by offering interactive or personalized experiences that AI can't replicate. I will have to ask AI ideas on what I can do that they can't replicate. For the podcasting, let's see what else. Oh, let's talk about the opportunities for creators. You can use it as a tool to enhance content and not replace it, I guess. And then it says focus on unique insights, live interaction. Oh, yeah, of course, community building stay relevant.

Speaker 1: 24:06

One thing I did notice, too kind of getting to AI, is that a lot of these YouTube videos are starting to annoy me. It's hard to tell initially if they're AI because it's getting so good, but inevitably it screws up and it starts repeating itself. It'll say, like you know, the podcast said this. And then it'll talk for whatever amount of time. And then it'll say talk for whatever you know amount of time. And then it'll say the podcast said this. And then re-say everything it said after the last time it said the podcast said this. Super annoying.

Speaker 1: 24:43

I was driving my way home the other day listening to a youtube and I'm like wait, am I going crazy? Did I just check out? Did I miss something? Is this on repeat? Is this, you know? So, and I skipped it and went to the next one and I did it again with a different episode on the way home Super bothersome. So there's that. What else we got here? Ai slop and all that stuff. I'm just kind of going through my notes real quick before I end this one. This is about done um, oh, it says youtube's cracking down on low quality, repetitive a repetitive ai content, demonetizing, removing it. Yeah, I'm right. I'll believe it when I see that, whatever you do, be good or be good at it.