Full-Duplex Voice AI: Why Interruption Handling Reshapes the Entire Pipeline
Unlike traditional turn-based voice assistants, full-duplex systems allow both the user and the AI to speak simultaneously, requiring the assistant to stop instantly when interrupted. Achieving this demands careful engineering: playback and microphone streams must be kept separate, echo cancellation must be precise, and any pending response should be discarded the moment a user speaks. Turn detection relies on a small dedicated model running over the audio stream, tuned on real recordings rather than scripted demos, to accurately sense when a speaker has paused versus finished. Latency budgeting is critical, with each stage — turn detection, retrieval, first token, and synthesis — needing explicit time allocations to keep responses feeling responsive. Developers are advised to test interruptions at the first word, mid-sentence, and during tool calls, and to use browser-based playgrounds to evaluate model behaviour before committing to a transport layer.
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