Voice Mode

Voice Mode lets you ask Merlin a question out loud, and hear the answer if you want to. Everything you say and everything Merlin answers also appears in the chat as text, so you can read it back later.

The voice controls

The voice controls sit in the thin toolbar just above the box where you type, beside Send:

• Microphone (🎙️): speak instead of typing. Your words appear in the box as you say them.
• Speaker (🔊 on, 🔇 off): read Merlin's answers aloud. This works whether you speak or type your question.
• Bell (🔔 on, 🔕 off): notification sounds. This is a separate choice from reading answers aloud, so you can have either, both or neither.

The microphone and the speaker are off until you turn them on. Hover over any control to see what it does.

Speaking a question

1. Open the Merlin chat and select the microphone.
2. The first time, your browser asks whether Magic Suite may use your microphone. Choose Allow. You are only asked when you first turn the microphone on.
3. Ask your question, then pause.

Your words go into the box, where you can correct them. When you pause, Merlin sends the question for you after a moment, as if you had pressed Send. If you click into the box to edit, it waits for you to press Send yourself.

A line above the chat shows what Voice Mode is doing: listening, thinking or reading the answer aloud.

Hearing the answer

With the speaker on, Merlin reads out the answer to each question you send. While it is reading an answer, the microphone pauses, so Merlin never hears itself. When it has finished, it listens again. Turn the speaker off at any time to stop an answer part-way through.

Tip: ticket references such as MS-26428 are read out letter by letter and digit by digit, so you can write them down.

Turning Voice Mode off

Select the microphone again. Merlin stops listening and your browser releases the microphone. Anything already in the box stays there for you to send or edit.

Where your speech is processed

Your voice is turned into text, and Merlin's answers into speech, on Panoramic Data's own servers. It is not sent to your browser's maker, to a cloud speech service, or to any other third party. The audio is not stored. Your question and Merlin's answer are kept as text in your chat history, as a typed question is.

Voice Mode is available only where Merlin is switched on for your organisation.

Credits

Speech recognition and synthesis use Kyutai's speech models, released by Kyutai under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (kyutai.org).