Choosing the right turn taking strategy for your voice application is key to building a successful voice AI experience. Layercode supports multiple turn taking modes, so you can choose the best one for your use case. The best Turn Taking Mode to use depends on your voice application’s use case and the environment your users are in. You may need to experiment with different modes to find the best fit for your application.

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Automatic Mode

For most use cases, the default “Automatic” turn taking mode (with Can Interrupt enabled) is the best option to begin with. This will let users speak freely to the AI, and interrupt it at any time. But if your users are in a noisy environment you may find that this noise inadvertently interrupts the AI’s response mid sentence. One solution to this is to disable Can Interrupt. In this case the user’s response will only be listened to after the AI has finished speaking. The user will not be able to interrupt the AI mid sentence, and will always have to wait for the AI to finish. The downside of this approach is that users may become impatient if the AI’s responses are long.

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Push to Talk Mode

When building voice AI for the web or mobile, you can enable Push to Talk mode. This mode requires a small config change in your web or app frontend (we include this in all our demo apps). In this mode, the user must hold down a button to speak. When the user holds down the button, their speech is transcribed. When the user releases the button, the AI will respond. This mode is great for noisy environments, or situations where you want the user to have complete control over the conversation.