Turning the AI On or Off
Every assistant has an AI on / AI off switch. With the AI off, the assistant stops replying by itself, but nothing is lost: every message on every channel still arrives in Live Inbox, and your team answers it there.
Use it when you want people, not automation, to handle conversations for a while — a launch day, a sensitive period, or while you rework the assistant's instructions.
Where to find it
- Live Inbox — at the top of the conversation list, next to Live. With one assistant it is a single switch; with several, click it to see a switch per assistant. If you filter the inbox to one assistant, the switch acts on that one.
- Dashboard -> Assistants -> [your assistant] — in the header, on every tab. It applies the moment you flip it; it is not part of Save.
Turning the AI off asks you to confirm. Only owners and admins can change it; agents see the current state.
What stops when the AI is off
- AI answers on every channel: web chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram and email.
- Flows (including flows that start a conversation or react to a page view).
- Follow-ups and proactive "are you still there?" messages.
- Automatic retries of unanswered messages.
What keeps working
- Every incoming message is saved and shown in Live Inbox right away.
- Your team is notified of new messages, once per conversation that is waiting for an answer.
- A phone number or email the customer types is still saved as a lead.
- Agents reply exactly as they always do.
- On your website the visitor is told once that a team member will reply.
- Messages that get no automated reply do not count towards your plan's AI usage.
In Live Inbox, conversations of an assistant whose AI is off are marked AI off, and a reminder bar shows at the top of the list.
AI off vs. Paused
| AI off | Paused | |
|---|---|---|
| Messages reach Live Inbox | Yes | No |
| Website chat loads | Yes | No |
| Automated replies | Stopped | Stopped |
Paused shuts the assistant down: new messages are ignored and never reach Live Inbox. Use AI off whenever you still want to receive and answer messages yourself.
Turning the AI back on
Flip the switch again. The assistant answers new messages from that moment. It does not go back and answer messages that arrived while the AI was off — those stay with your team.
> Tip: To take over a single conversation instead of the whole assistant, use Take over inside that conversation in Live Inbox.