GLOSSARY · Voice AI · Updated 27 October 2026
What is Voice AI latency?
Voice AI latency is the delay between a caller finishing a sentence and the AI starting its reply.
In human conversation, gaps between turns are short, often a fraction of a second. If an AI takes too long, the call feels awkward and callers talk over it or hang up.
Latency comes from several steps added together: detecting the end of speech, transcription, the language model's answer, speech synthesis and the network. Good systems keep the total under about a second and stream audio as soon as the first words are ready.
Common questions
- What latency should I expect from a voice agent?
- Under about one second is a sensible target. Test on a real phone call, not a demo on fast office Wi-Fi.
Related terms
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