AI control and takeover

Sela's AI assistant answers customers only when every one of a fixed set of conditions is true. Your team can stop it, take a conversation over, or give it back at any time. This page explains those controls and what customers see. For how the AI produces answers, see How the AI works.

Who answers a conversation#

Each conversation has a handling state that says who is dealing with it. It is separate from the conversation's status (open, closed and so on, described in Inbox and conversations).

In a workspace without AI Assist the labels read Needs agent and With agent.

When the AI stays quiet#

The AI does not answer if any one of these is true. The customer simply gets no AI reply and the conversation waits in the inbox.

Pause the AI and take over#

Pause one conversation#

In the thread header, choose Pause assistant. The handling state changes and the AI stops replying in that conversation only. Choose Hand back to assistant to allow it again. In bulk, select conversations and use Pause assistant or Hand to assistant.

Take over#

Assigning a conversation to a person, or sending a reply from an unowned conversation, makes a human the owner and stops the AI in that thread. If a teammate already owns it, use Take over (same team) or Request access (another team). Details are in Inbox and conversations.

Pause the AI for the whole workspace#

Open Settings, then Inbox settings, then Conversations (the same switch also appears under AI Assist), and turn on Disable AI replies. You need permission to manage settings. This stops AI replies in every conversation and channel, including replies being generated at that moment. Turning it off again does not send replies that were stopped in the meantime.

Handoff and escalation to humans#

The AI has a tool to hand a conversation to your team. It records a reason, a summary, a priority (low, medium, high, urgent) and a category. The conversation status becomes Escalated, your team is alerted and the AI stops answering. The customer sees an acknowledgement that the team was notified, not a promise of an immediate answer.

The AI escalates when the customer asks for a person, when it agrees to forward something such as a complaint, when an offer needs staff review, and when two answers in a row cannot be verified against your data.

Where escalations appear:

• The Needs review, Unassigned and team views in the inbox.
• Notifications, to the recipients configured in Settings, Inbox settings, Conversations, under conversation and notification routing. You can send alerts to the responsible operator and team leads (default) or to everyone who has escalation alerts on, and automatically assign new conversations to one operator.
• The Escalation queue screen in the mobile app, where you can claim or release items. There is no separate escalation queue page on the web. See Mobile app.

Alert delivery, quiet hours and SLA timers are covered in Notifications, SLA and escalations.

Cooldown#

If a customer misuses the assistant, Sela applies a temporary cooldown for that customer. The first strike is a warning only. Later strikes block AI replies for a few minutes each (5, 10, then 15 minutes), and strikes reset after 24 hours. While blocked, the customer receives a short notice, and your team can still reply manually.

Channel automation switches#

Some channels have their own AI switch, so you can keep the channel connected and stop AI replies on it.

• WhatsApp: in Integrations, the WhatsApp card has an AI automation switch (On or Off).
• Messenger and Instagram: Sela also honors a per-channel automation setting before each AI reply, but the dashboard only exposes the switch on the WhatsApp card. If the AI is silent on one of these channels, contact support.

A workspace-wide Disable AI replies overrides all channel switches.

What customers see#

• While the AI is active, replies come from your assistant name and brand, never Sela's.
• When you pause or take over, the customer sees nothing special. Human replies simply arrive in the same thread.
• After an escalation, the customer sees a short acknowledgement that the team was notified.
• During a cooldown, the customer sees a short notice.
• If the AI is off for any of the reasons above, the customer sees no automatic reply at all, so answer these conversations from the inbox.

Learned from chats#

The former "Ghost Mode" page is retired. When a conversation that a human worked on is closed, Sela can capture it as a suggested note for your knowledge base. Open Automation, then Learned from chats (Catalog & AI section) to review them. This opens Knowledge base, Smart notes, filtered to Learned from chats. Other filters on the page are All and Pasted by you.

The page needs the AI Assist add-on and permission to view automations.