In an AI chat without agents only the AI assistant answers. It never passes a conversation to people: when the knowledge base has no answer, it says so and asks for another question, and the conversation goes on. You switch this mode on per inbox, for the website chat, Telegram or WhatsApp.
When to use it
Use it when nobody is going to answer conversations: for example a business without support staff, or a bot that answers employees from internal documentation. In a normal chat the assistant hands a conversation to agents when it cannot help, and without agents that person would wait for an answer that never comes.
Where to switch it on
- Website chat: Admin > Inboxes, open the inbox whose channel is Live Chat, tab Conversations, section Features, turn on AI chat without agents and press Save.
- Telegram: open the Telegram inbox in Admin > Inboxes, turn on AI chat without agents in its form and press Save.
- WhatsApp: open the WhatsApp inbox in Admin > Inboxes, turn on AI chat without agents and press Save.
To go back to the normal mode, turn the switch off and save again.
What the visitor sees
All messages below come in the visitor's language.
- The first message ends with "You are chatting with an AI assistant.", without the usual promise of a human.
- When the knowledge base has no answer: "I could not find an answer to this in our knowledge base. Please ask another question." The visitor can simply ask the next question.
- When the AI model fails for a moment: "I could not answer just now. Please try asking again."
- Asked for a person, the visitor gets a fixed reply from the platform, not from the model: only the AI assistant answers in this chat, please ask your question. It comes in the visitor's language when the panel has that language (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Estonian), otherwise in the platform language, and it never promises a transfer.
- The assistant does not close the conversation. It is instructed not to ask whether the answer helped or whether anything else is needed and not to say that the chat is over, and the platform also removes such a question from the end of a reply when it recognizes one. A "no" or "thanks" does not end the chat: the assistant replies in one short sentence or not at all.
- There is no limit on the number of replies.
- The website chat does not show office hours, and the Office hours section of the inbox form is hidden.
- In Telegram the bot menu has no Call an operator command.
- Voice messages work as in any chat, but the assistant does not offer a call back: there is nobody to call.
What happens in the panel
- The conversation stays assigned to the assistant. Nothing reaches the agents' queue: no team is assigned and nobody gets an assignment email.
- The conversations are in the common list. An agent can still answer any of them by assigning it to themselves.
- The assistant never closes a conversation, so it never triggers the rating survey either.
Why one channel can be AI only while another goes to agents
The switch belongs to the inbox, not to the assistant. The assistant and the knowledge base serve every channel, and each inbox decides on its own whether its conversations may reach people. So the website chat can be AI only while Telegram hands conversations to your agents, or the other way round.
To have both on your website, for example an AI only chat on public pages and a chat with agents for existing customers, create a second Live Chat inbox, turn the switch on in one of them and put each code on its own pages. A live chat inbox you add gets the same chat as the inbox your platform came with, with its own Designer tab: see Live chat widget. A new inbox also needs a rule that gives its conversations to the assistant: see Routing a new channel to the assistant.
AI chat and Offer handoff to a human
The assistant setting Offer handoff to a human in AI > Assistants only stops the assistant from offering a person. With it turned off, the platform still hands a conversation to agents in some cases: when an answer has no support in the knowledge base, when the AI model fails, and when the conversation reaches the reply limit. Only AI chat without agents guarantees that conversations of an inbox never reach agents. More in Handoff to agents and back.
The AI chat widget type is a different setting
On the Designer tab of the website chat, Widget type can be set to AI chat. This changes only the layout: the chat opens straight into the conversation, without the home screen and the list of conversations, and the New conversation button at the top starts over. Who answers depends only on the AI chat without agents switch. The two often go together, but each works without the other.
The AI chat plan
On the AI chat plan the cabinet turns on AI chat without agents for your website chat by itself, when you sign up from the AI chat button on our website or pay for this plan. You can turn it off in the panel, and the cabinet does not turn it back on. After a move from AI chat to a higher plan the mode stays on: turn it off if the assistant should hand conversations to people. See Plans, limits and billing.