Barge-in
In speech AI, barge-in is the caller speaking while the system is still talking, and the system’s ability to detect that, stop, and respond to what was said.
Also called: interruption handling, talk-over
People interrupt. A voice system that cannot handle it either talks over the caller or forces them to wait for a prompt to finish, the phone-tree experience everyone dislikes. Good barge-in detection notices the caller has started speaking, cuts the output, and treats the interruption as the next turn.
It is one of the most-searched quality signals for voice AI because it is immediately audible on a test call. It depends on voice activity detection and endpointing, and on distinguishing a real interruption from a cough or background noise.
Barge-in is unrelated to barge in the telephony sense, where a supervisor joins a live call.