The Guardian's Q&A-style feature examines how "hello" as a phone greeting is fading, driven partly by generational habits and partly by growing fears over AI voice-cloning scams. Once standardised by Thomas Edison after the telephone's invention to replace time-based greetings like "good morning", the word is now increasingly seen as redundant thanks to caller ID and is also being deliberately avoided as a safety precaution.

Citing a New York Times report, the article notes that many young people now answer calls with "Hi", "What's up?" or "Yeah?" instead, with a survey finding 40% of 18-24 year-olds consider it acceptable to answer without any greeting at all. Separately, consumer bodies including Which?, the BBC and the Guardian have warned that scammers can clone a person's voice from their recorded phone greeting using AI, then use it to impersonate them and solicit money from relatives; the recommended defence is to stay silent on unknown calls until certain a real person is speaking.