12.03.2026, Moscow.
The Russian authorities intend to pass a bill that guarantees a person’s right to refuse interaction with so-called artificial intelligence (AI) and instead speak to a human when receiving services. If this happens, Russia will become the first country to take such a step, Rossa Primavera News Agency‘s IT Desk notes.
On March 10, Izvestia reported that Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development has drafted a bill that would require companies, when providing goods and services, not only to inform customers that they are communicating with a neural network but also to provide a live operator if the customer requests it. The new rule is planned to take effect on September 1, 2027.
It is worth noting that businesses, in their race for efficiency and cost reduction, easily forget that behind every request there is a living person. And the desire of clients to communicate with people rather than bots is quite widespread: on the internet many users share methods for making a machine “give up” during a call to a company and transfer them to a human operator.
Naturally, entrepreneurs who rely on digital solutions are unlikely to welcome such a measure. Karen Kazaryan, Director of the Institute for Internet Research, has already said that the bill needs to be revised, since mass requests for human service will lead to an “unjustified increase in expenses, bloated contact center staff,” and rising service prices.
However, not so long ago, when people contacted various companies and institutions, they were answered only by humans. Yet it was not particularly noticeable that after their replacement by bots the prices of services became significantly cheaper for customers.
The second problem raised by business representatives is that some services are already inseparably linked with the use of neural networks. They should be reminded that taxis can still be ordered by phone. If certain applications cannot function without the use of bots, the draft law proposes that the government establish a list of situations in which a person may refuse to communicate with a robot.
Overall, the idea appears reasonable, although the intrigue lies in how it will be implemented and whether lobbyists will manage to “revise” the bill in their own interests. Amendments could be introduced in such a way that people might ultimately be prohibited from demanding to speak with another human.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
