Dental AI Recording Consent: What Practices Need to Know

AI receptionists and ambient scribes listen to patients, and many of them record what they hear.

Dental AI recording consent comes down to two questions: who tells the patient a call or a chairside conversation is being recorded, and who gets their permission. To see where vendors put that job, we read the public terms, help pages and product pages of 17 dental AI vendors whose products record or transcribe patients, as they stood on October 20 and 21, 2026. That’s 10 phone and receptionist products and 8 operatory scribes, with Henry Schein One in both groups. So who tells the patient? In the public terms and pages we read, the responsibility sits with the customer or the practice, not the vendor. Every vendor that addresses the question says so. Where they write it down is what differs.

The AI phone vendors mostly write it into their terms. Six of the 10 we reviewed have a clause that makes the customer responsible for recording notice or consent. The scribes listening in the operatory mostly don’t. Of 8 scribe vendors, only Overjet publishes a recording-consent clause in a public contract, and we couldn’t confirm that contract covers its Voice product. Four others give the instruction in a help article, product page or blog post rather than in the agreements we found, and three don’t say who gives notice at all.

None of this is wrongdoing. Recording with the right notice or consent is lawful, and these are useful tools. The point is narrower. You should know where the duty is written, because for a dental group the contracting customer is often not the office where the patient is talking.

What 17 dental AI vendors say about recording consent

• 14 of 17 vendors address who handles recording notice or consent, and all 14 put it on the customer or the practice. Seven do it in a clause about recording, six in advice on a help page, product page or blog, and one (Peerlogic) in a general consent clause that covers its customers’ audio recordings. The other 3 don’t address it in anything we read.
• AI phones and receptionists: 6 of 10 put it in their public terms. Adit, CareStack’s VoiceStack, Dental Intelligence, Dentina.AI, Viva and Weave each have a clause making the customer responsible for recording notice or consent. Peerlogic has the general clause above. Mango Voice and Arini say it in a help article or blog. For Dentrix Ascend’s phone product we found nothing.
• Operatory AI scribes: only 1 of 8 has a recording-consent clause in a public contract. That’s Overjet’s master services agreement, which we couldn’t confirm covers its Voice scribe. Pearl, Henry Schein One (Dentrix Ascend’s Voice Notes Ambient), Denti.AI and Bola AI tell practices in a help page, product page or blog. Archy, Curve Dental and VideaHealth don’t say who gives notice in anything we read. We found no public product contract for Pearl.
• 4 of 17 describe a notice or consent function in the product. VoiceStack plays a disclosure, Mango Voice lets the practice record its own notice clip, Weave Support can configure a recorded notice on all inbound calls on request, and VideaHealth claims "click-to-activate consent" without describing what the click records. We didn’t count Peerlogic, which mentions call recording notifications without saying what they do, or Bola AI’s downloadable consent form.
• 9 of 17 say nothing we found about using recordings or patient data to train AI. The 8 that do say very different things. Weave’s AI receptionist terms let it use de-identified call records and transcripts to improve its AI. Mango Voice says it doesn’t use call data or voice audio to train its own AI models.
• 5 of 17 make a statement written specifically about recordings or transcripts. Archy keeps recordings for 7 days. Denti.AI keeps them "without a set time limit" unless you ask for something else. Henry Schein One advertises up to two years of access to call recordings. Mango Voice caps transcripts and summaries at 2 years. Pearl leaves retention to the practice.

Why it matters who the customer is

A clause that makes the customer responsible assigns that duty to the entity named as the customer in the agreement. In a dental group that is often the DSO or its management company, not the office where the phone rings or the patient sits in the chair.

Overjet’s master services agreement shows how that plays out. It makes the customer responsible for "consent to the use of recording devices and transcription". Then, for a DSO customer, it adds: "Customer shall require the Practices to enter into a written agreement with Customer that requires the Practices to comply with the terms and conditions of this Agreement". So the contract expects the DSO to pass its terms down to each managed practice in writing. One caution: the public agreement describes Overjet’s service mostly in imaging terms. Its data processing addendum lists audio recordings, so we read it as likely to cover Overjet Voice, but we didn’t find a Voice order form that confirms it.

The checks differ between the phone and the operatory.

• On the phone side, the clause sits in terms the group signs, but the notice has to play on every location’s line. That includes after hours and overflow, when the AI receptionist is the one answering.
• In the operatory, the instruction usually sits in support or marketing material, not in an express clause in the agreements we found. Check whether your agreement pulls that documentation in. If it doesn’t, ask the vendor to put it in writing.

Either way, the standard is the group’s to write. Leave each office to sort out its own greeting and its own consent form, and you end up with as many versions as you have locations. In a post about acquisitions I wrote that exceptions rarely stay singular. That is how a standard quietly turns into a preference. Recording consent works the same way.

AI recording consent, vendor by vendor

Henry Schein One appears twice because Dentrix Ascend sells both a phone product and an ambient note product. Each quote links to the page it comes from, and the document type sits under it. Public terms are the customer or product terms a vendor publishes on its site. A signed order form or enterprise agreement can say something different.

Data window: each vendor’s public pages, read October 20 and 21, 2026. "Public terms" means customer or product terms the vendor publishes. "Nothing found" means not found in the sources we reviewed. Source: Medix Dental IT review of 17 dental AI vendors.

Vendor	Where it’s written	What the wording says
AI phones and receptionists (10 vendors)
Adit	Public terms	"Customer is solely responsible for ensuring that its use of any call recording features complies with all applicable local, state, and federal laws and regulations, including but not limited to obtaining any necessary consent from call participants." public terms
CareStack (VoiceStack)	Public terms	"Customer shall ensure consent from all required parties so that these calls can be recorded, stored, and used by VoiceStack for the purpose of providing and/or analyzing the Services." product terms
Dental Intelligence	Public terms	"Customer represents and warrants that it has all legally required consents, notices, and authorizations to submit any Input (including any audio, voice recordings, or other personal data) to the AI Receptionist for processing." From its AI terms. product terms
Dentina.AI	Public terms	"You, not Company, are solely responsible for determining whether any notice, disclosure, or consent is required before placing, answering, recording, monitoring, or using an artificial or pre-recorded voice in a call and for providing and documenting all such notices and consents." public terms
Viva	Public terms	"You will obtain express consent from each Client for such Client: (i) to receive emails, SMS or text messages, phone calls, and other types of communication using the contact information Clients provide, and (ii) for such communications to be recorded." Its terms define Clients to include the practice’s patients. public terms
Weave	Public terms	"you understand that you are responsible for providing any and all disclosures required and that Weave is not responsible for any violation of any applicable law related to call recording" From its AI receptionist terms. product terms
Peerlogic	General clause only	"Customer is liable for data legality and must secure appropriate consents." General clause. The same addendum says customer data includes audio recordings and transcriptions. data processing addendum
Mango Voice	Help page, product page or blog	"Depending on your state's laws you may need to create a sound clip informing callers that calls are being recorded." help center
Arini	Help page, product page or blog	"Include appropriate disclaimers in greetings about call recording, following state-specific requirements." blog post
Henry Schein One (Ascend Phones)	Nothing found on who gives notice	Dentrix Ascend’s phone product keeps call recordings. We found nothing on caller notice in its terms or product pages. Source: product page
Operatory AI scribes (8 vendors)
Overjet	Public terms	"Customer shall be solely responsible or obtaining any legally required consent … including without limitation consent to the use of recording devices and transcription" (sic) Master services agreement. A DSO customer must have each managed practice sign an agreement to comply with it. We couldn’t confirm it covers Overjet Voice. public terms
Pearl	Help page, product page or blog	"Always obtain patient consent prior to recording during an appointment." No public product contract found. help center
Henry Schein One (Voice Notes Ambient)	Help page, product page or blog	"If you record during the exam (using Voice Notes Ambient), your practice is responsible for following your state's laws." product page
Denti.AI	Help page, product page or blog	"We recommend having a comprehensive technology and digital media consent that covers pictures, AI-powered diagnostic aids, posting on social media, recording phone calls, clinical conversations, and more." Answer to "Do I need to inform patients they are being recorded?" help center
Bola AI	Help page, product page or blog	"Patients should know when ambient recording is part of a visit, and practices adopting these tools need a clear internal process for consent, data retention, and vendor accountability under a BAA." Also publishes a patient consent form. blog post
Archy	Nothing found on who gives notice	Its agreement has a general patient-data consent clause that doesn’t mention recording. Source: public terms
Curve Dental	Nothing found on who gives notice	Its US terms mention AI voice capture and transcription but only assign review of the output. Source: public terms
VideaHealth	Nothing found on who gives notice	Claims "click-to-activate consent" in a press release, without saying who presents it (see the next table). Source: press release

Notice features, AI training and keeping recordings

Data window: each vendor’s public pages, read October 20 and 21, 2026. "Not found" means not found in the sources we reviewed. "All data" means a rule about the customer’s data in general, not one written for recordings. Training scope varies by vendor (see the notes below). Source: Medix Dental IT review.

Vendor	Notice or consent feature	Recordings, patient data and AI training	What it says about keeping recordings
Adit	Not found	Not found	General terms, no period privacy notice
Archy	Not found	Not found	Recordings kept 7 days, transcript stays product page
Arini	Not found	Not found	Not found
Bola AI	Publishes a patient consent form consent form	Not found	60 days after termination (all data) public terms
CareStack (VoiceStack)	Plays a disclosure "if required" product page	Not found	Not found
Curve Dental	Not found	Says patient data never trains AI models product page	General terms, no period BAA
Dental Intelligence	Not found	Its outside AI vendors can’t train on customer data without separate consent (own use not stated) product terms	General terms, no period privacy notice
Denti.AI	Not found	Not found	Recordings kept with no set time limit, adjustable on request help center
Dentina.AI	Not found	Not found	General terms, no period privacy notice
Henry Schein One (Dentrix Ascend)	Not found	Not found	Up to two years of access to call recordings product page
Mango Voice	Practice records its own notice clip help center	Says call data and voice audio don’t train its own AI models privacy notice	Transcripts and summaries: 2-year maximum privacy notice
Overjet	Not found	May train on de-identified patient data (not recording-specific) BAA	May delete 30 days after termination (all data) privacy notice
Pearl	Not found	Offers an opt-out of model training product page	Practice controls retention and deletion product page
Peerlogic	Mentions "call recording notifications", not described blog post	Says it de-identifies data and trains only on synthetic data blog post	Deleted 30 days after termination (all data) data processing addendum
VideaHealth	Claims "click-to-activate consent" press release	Not found	General terms, no period privacy notice
Viva	Not found	May train a practice’s own finetuned model on data it uploads public terms	General terms, no period privacy notice
Weave	Recorded notice on inbound calls, set up by Weave on request help center	May use de-identified call records and transcripts to improve its AI product terms	30 days to retrieve after termination (all data) public terms

Scope notes on the table:

• Weave’s terms say that activating its call recording feature means "all calls may be recorded automatically". Its help center says Weave Support can set up a pre-recorded message on all inbound calls telling callers they’re being recorded. The practice has to ask for it.
• VoiceStack says callers hear "a brief disclosure if required" and that it "starts capturing the audio once consent is implied". We quote that wording and don’t judge it against any one state’s law.
• Training means training or improving AI models, and the scope varies by vendor. Weave’s line covers de-identified content, data, call records, transcripts and interactions processed through its AI. Overjet’s covers all de-identified patient data. Pearl’s opt-out covers all practice data. Lines about training staff on recorded calls aren’t counted.
• Keeping recordings: labels marked "all data" are rules about the customer’s data in general, not rules written for recordings. Henry Schein One’s figure is an access window, not a deletion deadline.

What the recording laws say

I’m not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. Read your own states’ rules with your counsel. This page covers recording notice and consent only, not HIPAA or business associate terms. What follows is our summary of the statute text we read, not a complete statement of any state’s law.

Federal law sets the floor. Under the federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d), a party to a call may generally record it, or another party may give prior consent, unless the recording is made to commit a criminal or tortious act. States can require more, and several do.

• All parties, on the face of the statute: California, Florida, Illinois (surreptitious recording of private conversations), Maryland, Massachusetts (secret recording), Michigan, Montana (hidden devices), New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.
• It depends: Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada and Oregon treat phone calls and in-person conversations differently, or have two provisions that point different ways.

One limit on that list: courts in Michigan have weighed in on whether a participant can record, and we didn’t research that case law. In practice, if your group has locations in any of these states, plan on telling everyone on the call or in the room.

Two details matter for a dental group. First, the phone and the operatory can fall under different rules. Oregon requires that all participants in an in-person conversation be specifically informed, while a participant on a phone call can record. Second, an announcement can do real work. Washington’s statute treats an announcement made to all parties, and recorded, as consent. Connecticut’s civil statute accepts a verbal notice recorded at the start of the call, or a warning tone repeated about every fifteen seconds. That is why the greeting on every line matters.

In the Midwest and Mountain states we serve, Illinois bars recording a private conversation "in a surreptitious manner" without the consent of all other parties. Kansas lets either party to a phone call consent. In an all-party state, "all parties" can include a parent or an interpreter in the operatory, not just the patient.

What Lisota v. Heartland Dental did and didn’t decide

The one dental case on this issue we found is worth reading closely. In July 2025 a patient, Megan Lisota, sued Heartland Dental and RingCentral in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She alleged that RingCentral’s AI listened to and analyzed her calls to a Heartland-supported clinic without her permission. Those were allegations.

On July 24, 2026, the court dismissed the case with prejudice and entered judgment for both defendants. That is the docket as we read it in October 2026. It held that any alleged "interception" occurred in the ordinary course of RingCentral’s business, which is an exception under the federal Wiretap Act. The Illinois common-law privacy claim fell with it. The Illinois eavesdropping statute was never part of the case.

What the court left open is the part a dental group should notice. In a footnote it declined to dismiss on consent grounds because "it remains unclear whether Tru Family Dental, a plausible recipient of Lisota’s call, ever (1) directly consented to RingCentral’s activities or (2) gave Heartland the authority to consent on its behalf". That question is about the clinic’s consent to the vendor under federal law, not a patient’s consent under state law. In plain terms, the court couldn’t tell who had agreed to what between the DSO, the clinic and the vendor. That’s the question to ask about your own contracts. Who is the customer, and who agreed for whom?

A federal win also doesn’t settle state law. In Valencia v. Invoca, a case in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California over AI analysis of AT&T customer-service calls, the court denied a motion to dismiss claims under California’s privacy statute in November 2025. That case isn’t about healthcare. The ruling let those California claims proceed without deciding liability.

A recording consent checklist for a dental group

Phone lines

• A notice and consent process your counsel has approved, on every route that records, including the after-hours and overflow routes your AI receptionist answers. Ask each vendor in writing whether the product plays the notice. Of the 10 phone vendors we reviewed, only VoiceStack, Mango Voice and Weave describe a notice function, so check it’s switched on for every line.
• Test each route. Call it, listen for the notice, and check what the recording actually captures.
• Check whether calls are recorded automatically once the feature is switched on.
• One script, owned centrally, rolled out to every location, instead of one per office. Our dental office phone systems comparison covers the platforms themselves.

The operatory

• Decide verbal or written consent, who asks, and where it’s documented in the chart.
• Cover everyone whose voice is captured, plus a way to say no that doesn’t affect care.
• Set how long audio is kept, separately from the note it produces.

The contract. Ask every vendor that records:

1. Where does your agreement say who handles recording notice and consent? If the answer is a help article, ask whether the agreement incorporates it.
2. Does the product play or capture a notice, and can we set the wording per state?
3. Do recordings or transcripts train or improve your AI, de-identified or not, and can we opt out?
4. How long do you keep the audio, separately from the transcript, and can we shorten it?
5. If we sign as a group, what does each practice have to sign?

My advice on any AI tool hasn’t changed. Have a vendor risk assessment done, ask the tough technical and data protection questions, then pilot on a small scale. For a group, add one step: ask these questions once, centrally, and keep the answers with each contract. An acquired practice may arrive with its own phone vendor or its own scribe, so recording terms belong in IT due diligence too. For what these tools do in the first place, see how dental practices and DSOs use AI and our ranked list of AI software for dental practices.

This is part of the vendor governance work we do for groups: one group-wide recording and consent standard, with each state’s requirements written down for every location and every AI tool that records. If you’re rolling out an AI receptionist or a scribe across locations and want a second set of eyes on the terms, happy to compare notes.

How we did this

We started from 24 dental AI vendors we reviewed in October 2026 for their HIPAA and patient-data terms and kept the 17 whose own pages say a product records, transcribes or summarizes patient phone calls or conversations in the practice. For NexHealth and Planet DDS we found no page saying their products record patients. For five others we found no qualifying product in the sources we reviewed. RingCentral, Heartland’s co-defendant, is a general phone platform, so it isn’t a table row. We wrote the inclusion rule before counting anything.

For each vendor we read the terms, BAAs, data processing addendums, privacy notices, help centers, product pages and blog posts we could find, crawled full sitemaps, and searched each domain for anything the sitemaps missed. No logins and no requests to vendors. Every quote is checked by script against the saved page it links to, and a second, independent review re-checked our coding.

The limits, in plain terms. This reports what each vendor publicly states, not what its product does. A signed contract can differ from the public version. "Nothing found" means not found in the sources we reviewed, not that the vendor has no policy. Pages change, so treat this as a snapshot of October 20 and 21, 2026, and check a vendor’s current terms before relying on any row.

A word on where I sit. I’m the CEO of Medix Dental IT. We sell managed IT and security services, not AI software, and no vendor in this review was contacted or paid to be included. If you represent one of these vendors and something here is wrong or out of date, contact us with the source and we’ll review it.

Posted in AI in Dentistry, Research