Voice agent – Definition & Meaning

Definition of voice agent

: an AI agent that listens and responds through spoken language, carries on a conversation, and may reason, use tools, or take actions for the speaker
- The airline's voice agent changed the passenger's seat after confirming the booking number aloud.
- A useful voice agent must handle interruptions and respond quickly enough for the exchange to feel like a conversation.

Origin & history

The phrase predates generative AI, but became a standard industry label in the mid-2020s as real-time speech models were combined with tool-using language-model agents. Microsoft used the term prominently in October 2026 when it introduced streaming transcription and speech-generation models designed to work together in conversational agents.

Test yourself

Which of these is the meaning of voice agent?

Related terms

AI agent an AI system that can pursue a goal over many steps on its own, deciding what to do next… speech-to-text technology that converts spoken words into written text text-to-speech technology that turns written text into spoken audio, now often in highly natural or cloned… streaming sending a model's response token by token as it is generated, so text appears on screen… latency the delay between sending a request to a model and getting a response, often measured as time… voice cloning using AI to copy a specific person's voice from a short recording so it can say new things chained voice pipeline a voice-agent architecture that converts a person's speech to text, sends the text through an…

Cite this entry

"Voice agent." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/voice-agent/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2026.