Opt-Out Mid-Call: What an AI Agent Must Do Next
When someone tells an AI voice agent to take them off the list, three Australian obligations fire at once. The Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 requires the call to end immediately. Under the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, consent can no longer be inferred. The Spam Act 2003 allows 5 business days to stop the SMS and email. Nothing registers that number.
- The call is outside the Spam Act. Section 5(5) excludes voice calls over a standard telephone service from the definition of an electronic message, so section 18 never touches the phone leg.
- A spoken “stop calling me” is not a Do Not Call Register listing, and registration on the register never expires — section 17(1)(b) makes it “in force indefinitely”. The fixed term most calling teams still plan around was repealed in 2015.
- The ACMA’s expectation is immediate: “Terminate a telemarketing call immediately if a recipient indicates in any way that they want it to stop.”
- 5 business days is the outer limit for the message channels (Spam Act Schedule 2, clause 6). Propagating one opt-out across four suppression lists is the hard part.
Three obligations, three different clocks
The call in progress. Section 13(1)(b) of the 2017 Industry Standard requires immediate termination if “the call recipient asks for the call to be terminated or otherwise indicates that the call recipient does not want the call to continue”. It reaches synthetic voices — section 12 sets rules for calls “involving recorded or synthetic voices” — and the ACMA’s July 2024 Statement of Expectations (DOCX) is blunt: “Commercial calls made using an auto-dialler (robocalls) or that use pre-recorded or AI voices are all telemarketing calls.” The Standard is due to sunset on 1 April 2027: what AI callers should watch before April 2027.
Future calls — this is the gap. Section 11(1) of the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 only protects numbers on the register, and section 11(3) excuses a call where, per the register’s industry page, “the telemarketer or fax marketer had washed their list in the last 30 days and the number was not on the register”. Someone who tells your agent to stop has registered nothing, so your next wash returns them clean and only your own suppression list prevents the next call. The same page states that “If consumers indicate they do not wish to receive telemarketing calls or marketing faxes from an organisation, consent ends immediately and can no longer be inferred”. Washing mechanics: the Do Not Call Register and AI voice agents.
The register itself does not expire — most calling teams have this wrong. Under section 17(1)(b) a registration, “unless sooner removed from the Do Not Call Register in accordance with a determination under subsection 18(1), remains in force indefinitely”. There is no validity period: Schedule 3 of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Act 2015 substituted that paragraph and repealed the subsections that had set a three-year term. donotcall.gov.au tells consumers the same: “Your number will remain on the register indefinitely unless you actively remove it.” A number that washes dirty stays dirty until the account-holder removes it, and the 30-day cycle in section 11(3) — not any registration expiry — is the only clock you get.
The message channels. Schedule 2, clause 6 of the Spam Act 2003 says withdrawal of consent “takes effect at the end of the period of 5 business days” beginning on the day the request was sent, served or delivered. The ACMA’s Avoid sending spam page (updated 29 November 2024) renders this as an unsubscribe option that “honours a request to unsubscribe within 5 working days” and “is functional for at least 30 days after you sent the message” — the 30 days being section 18(1)(e).
What the Spam Act does not do is govern the call. Section 5(5): “If a message is sent by way of a voice call made using a standard telephone service, the message is not an electronic message for the purposes of this Act.” Whether a spoken in-call request operates as a clause 6 withdrawal for SMS and email is not addressed on acma.gov.au/avoid-sending-spam or in the July 2024 Statement of Expectations, checked 4 September 2026. Treat that ambiguity as a reason to suppress, not a reason to wait.
Detection: what actually counts as an opt-out
Speech is not a footer link. “I’m not interested” declines the offer; “take me off your list” withdraws permission to contact. A false negative is a breach with an evidence trail; a false positive only costs a prospect, and stays recoverable if you store the transcript segment beside the suppression record. So err toward suppression. The ACMA sets the floor twice — “Terminate a telemarketing call immediately if a recipient indicates in any way that they want it to stop”, and “Remove a person from call or marketing lists if they ask you to do so”. “In any way” is a wide test.
| Signal heard | Opt-out? | What the agent should do | What to record |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Take me off your list” / “Stop calling me” / “Unsubscribe” | Yes — unambiguous | Confirm once, suppress all channels, end the call | Verbatim segment, timestamp, scope, propagation receipts |
| “Don’t call me” / “Don’t ring this number again” | Yes — channel-scoped on its face | Suppress voice now; ask once about email and SMS; if unclear, suppress all | Verbatim segment, stated scope, inferred scope and why |
| “Can you stop the texts?” | Yes — message channels | Suppress SMS and email; not consent to keep calling | Verbatim segment, 5-business-day clock start, list IDs updated |
| “Hang up” / audible distress | Terminate now; not necessarily an opt-out | End the call under s 13(1)(b); flag for human review | Termination reason, transcript, review-queue entry |
| “I’m not interested” / “We already have someone” | No — objection, not withdrawal | Close politely; apply cooling-off pacing | Disposition code, next-touch date |
| “Who gave you my number?” | No — but high risk | Give the consent source; offer removal proactively | Consent provenance served, offer made, response |
| ASR confidence below threshold on a suppression phrase | Treat as yes | Suppress, then queue the audio for review | Confidence score, model version, audio pointer |
A missed token here is a breach, not a clumsy sentence — see Australian accents and ASR word error rate.
Propagation: four suppression lists, no shared key
Detection is the easy half. The opt-out lands in the voice platform, whose suppression list is not the SMS provider’s, the email platform’s or the CRM’s; the breach usually arrives four days later as a nurture email, not a second call. The ACMA expects scope to default wide: “Ensure that when an individual wants to unsubscribe, they are given a straightforward option of unsubscribing from all marketing messages (not only some).” Outsourcing does not help — businesses remain responsible “regardless of whether they outsource their telemarketing or e-marketing or consent gathering through third party or affiliate marketing arrangements”. Three requirements follow:
- One suppression service, many subscribers. Write the opt-out once to a system of record; every channel checks it before each send. Pull beats push — a failed webhook silently loses a suppression, a pre-send check cannot.
- Suppress the sequence, not the list. Cancel the enrolment, not only the membership: a removed contact can still have queued steps in a running sequence.
- Propagation is a state machine with receipts — requested, acknowledged, confirmed suppressed. Any channel unconfirmed against your internal SLA is an incident, long before the 5 business days expire.
This is orchestration work, not model work. Zian’s SmartReach AI™ decides message, channel and timing across more than 10,000 leads a day; at that volume a suppression reaching three of four channels is a queue of breaches, not a rounding error. See AI agent CRM integration patterns, or Apply For Partnership.
Identity: the opt-out attaches to the address
Teams tie themselves in knots resolving an opt-out to a person: same human, second mobile, work email, shared household line. Among practices that will not meet its expectations, the ACMA lists: “Do not continue to send marketing messages after an unsubscribe request is received on the basis that someone else is using the email address or phone number (the unsubscribe request applies to the address regardless of who may be using it).” The minimum unit of suppression is the address you were contacted on. Person-level suppression is an addition, never a substitute; where your identity graph links a suppressed mobile to a second number, suppress both and record the inference.
Confirmation, evidence and latency
Keep the reply to one sentence — state the scope, do not upsell, do not ask why, do not offer reduced frequency, then end the call: “Understood — I’m removing you from all our calls, texts and emails now, and you won’t hear from us again.”
What gets written matters more, because the ACMA can compel it. Its expectation for consent records is that they “include the method by which the consent was obtained, the terms that applied and the date and time it was obtained”; hold the withdrawal record to that standard — capture channel, timestamp with timezone, transcript segment and audio pointer, ASR confidence and model version, scope applied and whether stated or inferred, identifiers suppressed, per-channel propagation status.
Honour it in the conversation, not on the statutory clock. The ACMA expects businesses to “Action unsubscribe requests as quickly as practicable, and always within a maximum of 5 business days”; an autonomous system has no reason to use any of it. If you cannot suppress before the call ends, the window is not protecting you — it is hiding a queue.
The US contrast, briefly
United States rules do not apply to calls made to Australian numbers, but they codify what Australia leaves implicit, and most AI calling stacks are built once for both. Under 47 CFR 64.1200, paragraph (a)(10), a called party may revoke prior express consent “by using any reasonable method to clearly express a desire not to receive further calls or text messages from the caller or sender”, and such requests “must be honored within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt of such request”. Paragraph (d)(3) is stricter about the record than the timer: on receiving a do-not-call request, the caller “must record the request and place the subscriber’s name, if provided, and telephone number on the do-not-call list at the time the request is made”. The 2017 Industry Standard has no equivalent — read end to end on 4 September 2026, it covers calling hours, caller identification, a mechanism to request details during a recorded or synthetic-voice call, terminating the call in progress, and calling line identification, and says nothing about future calls or suppression lists. State-level AI disclosure rules add a further layer for US calling: US state AI call disclosure laws.
Frequently asked questions
Does saying “take me off your list” put my number on the Do Not Call Register?
No. Registration is a separate act by the account-holder or their nominee. Telling a caller to stop obliges that business to suppress you, but the register is unchanged and other telemarketers will still see the number as callable. It works the other way too: a registration made years ago has not lapsed. Under section 17(1)(b) of the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 it “remains in force indefinitely” unless removed, and donotcall.gov.au tells consumers the number “will remain on the register indefinitely unless you actively remove it”.
How fast must an unsubscribe be actioned in Australia?
Withdrawal of consent takes effect at the end of 5 business days under Schedule 2, clause 6 of the Spam Act 2003, and the ACMA describes it as honouring the request “within 5 working days”. The facility must stay functional for at least 30 days after the message was sent, under section 18(1)(e). For a voice agent both are outer limits, not design targets.
Is “I’m not interested” an opt-out?
Not on its face — it declines the offer rather than withdrawing permission to contact. But the ACMA expects a call terminated “immediately if a recipient indicates in any way that they want it to stop”, so an agent hearing it should close politely rather than push a rebuttal. Whether it also triggers suppression is a policy choice; suppressing is safer.
Does the Spam Act cover the phone call itself?
No. Section 5(5) provides that a message sent by way of a voice call made using a standard telephone service is not an electronic message for the purposes of the Act. Voice calls are governed by the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 and the 2017 Industry Standard instead.
Do we still need to wash against the register if we keep our own suppression list?
Yes — they protect against different things. The section 11(3) defence depends on having washed within the 30-day period ending at the end of the day on which the call was made; your internal list does nothing for numbers registered by people you have never spoken to. And express consent, where it is not expressed to be for a specified period or an indefinite period, is taken to have been withdrawn three months after it was given — Schedule 2, clause 3 of the Do Not Call Register Act 2006.
Get the suppression path right before you scale the dialling
The opt-out is the one moment in an outbound conversation where an autonomous system has no room to be approximately right. Ask any vendor for the suppression state machine, the per-channel confirmation receipts and a sample opt-out record — not a screenshot of a settings toggle. To see how Zian handles it, Apply For Partnership.