Seamless communication has always been the backbone of innovation. From the telegraph to video conferencing, communication technology has been essential to technological progress for over a century. Agora has been at the forefront of Real-Time Communication (RTC) for over a decade, facilitating meaningful human connections through voice and video.
While RTC used to be exclusively human-to-human, advances in large language models (LLMs) have led to a profound shift, opening up entirely new ways for humans to interact with AI. Today, as we see rapid adoption of conversational voice AI, Agora's robust RTC infrastructure is uniquely positioned to power this next evolution.
The shift from text chat to voice AI
While LLMs aren’t new, interaction with them is still mostly takes place via text-based chat. Voice interaction with AI is faster, easier, and more intuitive than typing with a chatbot. It enhances accessibility and efficiency and enables hands-free, real-time communication. From on-demand live language tutoring to 24/7 customer support, voice-based AI unlocks new possibilities for businesses implementing conversational AI.
For voice-based conversational AI to be truly effective, it must replicate the speed, responsiveness, and fluidity of natural human dialogue. This need for natural and low-latency interaction requires a powerful network infrastructure capable of supporting instantaneous voice transmission while reducing processing delay between speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech.
The network infrastructure for conversational AI
Agora powers over 80 billion minutes of real-time voice and video interactions every month, across 200+ countries and territories. At the heart of our global real-time communication platform our Software-Defined Real-Time Network (SD-RTN™), renowned for its ability to deliver ultra-low latency interactions reliably and consistently. Leveraging machine learning, SD-RTN™ intelligently routes traffic, minimizing latency and packet loss—key components essential for creating natural and responsive conversations.
SD-RTN™ enables natural real-time voice responses from AI agents. Because it is a software-defined network, it’s easy to scale your voice AI experience from one to millions of users gracefully. 99.99% uptime means you don’t need to worry about downtime for your users, and SD-RTN™ can still deliver fluent voice responses even with up to 60% downlink packet loss.
Agora’s infrastructure, optimized for seamless real-time communication for over a decade, now provides an ideal foundation for powering conversational AI. In a world where users increasingly prefer natural voice interactions over text-based conversations, Agora's RTC infrastructure and expertise ensure interactions with AI agents feel as effortless as chatting with a friend.
Clear, natural conversations anywhere
Another key pain point for conversational AI is the ability for voice agents to accurately hear and understand users in noisy environments. For widespread adoption, users need to be able to talk to voice AI agents wherever they are—whether in a bustling café or a noisy subway car. Agora’s proprietary acoustic algorithms effectively isolate the user’s voice, filtering out background noise and echo in any environment.
Another challenge to making voice AI more useful and human is enabling quick interruption. If you change your mind about the question you want to ask, waiting for the agent to run through a long response is a terrible user experience. Agora's intelligent interruption handling capabilities are up to 2x faster than voice AI from leading LLMs, meaning AI agents can also instantly pause their speech when a user interjects, mirroring natural human conversational dynamics.
Flexible and rapid development
Flexibility and speed are essential for developers integrating voice AI into their applications. Developers can effortlessly connect to leading Large Language Model (LLM) providers like OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok and more. They can also bring their own custom AI models or use Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for a fully customized conversational AI experience. Agora's platform supports all major development frameworks and devices, offering a versatile, scalable solution tailored to developers' specific needs, from full customization to rapid, no-code deployment.
As conversational AI increasingly shapes our interactions, Agora’s real-time communication infrastructure is uniquely qualified to power the next generation of voice-based AI experiences. By combining decades of RTC innovation with cutting-edge AI, Agora doesn't just anticipate the future—it enables developers to build it today.
Get the full scoop on Agora’s conversational AI, including links to documentation and an interactive demo: Conversational AI Engine
