Why is the AI not replying at all?

Your AI assistant has stopped answering, either on one conversation or everywhere. Most of the time this is a setting, not a fault, work through these checks in order.

Check these first

1. Has a person taken this conversation over? The single most common reason. When a teammate assigns the conversation to a person by hand, replies to the customer, or the AI hands it to a human, the AI stops answering that conversation, on purpose. Open the conversation and look at its AI status: "A human agent has taken over" means the AI will not answer again until someone hands it back, by choosing Resume or the AI Assistant in the assignee control, or by resolving the conversation, see How do I snooze, resolve or reopen a conversation? "Needs human" is not always the same thing though, if the customer waited a few minutes with no reply and then answered the AI's one-time offer to help, the AI is answering again even though the badge still says Needs human, because the conversation still needs a person to actually close it out. Open the conversation and check the AI status panel for the real picture rather than going by the badge alone. A teammate's name on a conversation that was shared out automatically does not stop the AI. See How do I take over from the AI in the middle of a chat? to hand it back.
2. Is the AI paused or turned off for just this conversation? Look for an "AI paused" or "AI off" label in the conversation header. See How do I take over from the AI in the middle of a chat? for how to check and how to hand it back with Resume.
3. Is the AI turned off for this whole inbox? Check the inbox's Bot Configuration tab, under Settings, then Channels, then Connections. If AI handling is set to Off, nobody on this inbox is getting an automatic reply, ever, until you change it. See How do I turn the AI off for one inbox?
4. Is the AI paused for your whole account? The AI Assistant page, in the sidebar, has its own broader Pause switch on the Overview tab, separate from the per-inbox and per-conversation controls above.
5. Is it outside your business hours? Depending on your account, you can set the AI to hand conversations to a human rather than keep answering once you are closed. If that is turned on and it is currently outside your hours, an incoming message is queued for a person instead of answered automatically, this is working as intended, not a fault.
6. Did a teammate just reply? Right after a human sends a message on a conversation, the AI goes quiet on that one conversation for a short window so it does not talk over your teammate. It wakes itself back up on its own, you do not need to do anything.

If something has actually broken on our side

This looks different from every case above: instead of silence, the customer gets a short message, "I'm having trouble responding right now. I'll have a team member message you back here shortly." and the conversation is automatically marked as needing a human. If you see that message, the AI did not ignore anyone, something briefly failed on our side and it handed off honestly rather than going quiet. You do not need to fix anything, just answer the conversation the way you would if a person had escalated it to you. If it keeps happening on multiple conversations, open Help in your sidebar and let us know, that pattern is something only we can diagnose.