How to Temporarily Disable AI Responses

Sometimes you may want to prevent your AI chatbot from automatically responding to user queries—perhaps during maintenance, testing, or when you want all conversations handled by human agents only.

Here's how to temporarily disable AI responses without deleting your automated response rules.

Steps to Disable AI Responses

1. Navigate to Automated Responses: Go to your chatbot dashboard and click on the "Automated Responses" section from the left sidebar.

2. Create a Catch-All Rule: Click the "Add New" button. In the "User Message" field, enter an asterisk: *. The asterisk acts as a wildcard that matches any user input.

3. Leave the Response Blank: In the "Bot Response" field, leave it completely empty. Do not type any message or text.

4. Save the Rule: Click "Save" to activate the configuration.

Note: While this rule is active, make sure your human agents are available to handle incoming queries, as users won't receive any automated assistance.

Re-enabling AI Responses

To turn AI responses back on, simply:

1. Go back to Automated Responses

2. Delete or disable the catch-all rule with the asterisk (*)

3. Your previous automated responses will resume working immediately

Frequently asked questions

Does this change my training data
No. Your knowledge sources and training stay the same. Only responses are paused.

Does this affect all channels
Yes. Any channel connected to that project that uses Automated Responses will follow this wildcard rule.

Can I still escalate to a human manually
Yes. Your team can reply from the inbox as usual. The pause only affects automatic AI replies.

Can I limit the pause to only some messages
This wildcard method pauses all messages.
If you want to silence only specific questions, use keywords instead of * and leave the Bot Response empty for those patterns only.