Can you configure voice assistant to not say anything if it doesn't understand?

Configuration Voice Assistant
1

Before I raise a WTH, I thought I’d check this first. We had a couple of voice assistants, both an Atom Echo and a S3-Box one. We’ve had to stop using them because they were interrupting us several times during the day (and during Teams or Zoom calls) with “I’m sorry, I don’t understand <repeat the last sentence or two it heard>”.

I’m sure this happens with other voice gadgets (like Alexa or Google) and they just quietly ignore it. Is there a way to configure Voice Assistant to fail silently in these situations?

2

If you are using OpenAI you can use something like this in the configuration

If a request seems like it may be an accidental prompt, or makes no sense, and say “Cancelled“

While not perfect, it knocks down the chattiness.

3

You can adjust the sentence that is spoken in response to an unrecognized intent:

language: "en"
responses:
  errors:
    no_intent: Custom response text

Perhaps it is possible to leave it empty (I did not try this, but I managed to change the response of my Assistant like that)

4

I’m quite new at ESPHome. Can you show me where to add that in a config like this?

substitutions:
  name: "office-voice-assistant"
  friendly_name: Office Voice Assistant
packages:
  esphome.voice-assistant: github://esphome/wake-word-voice-assistants/esp32-s3-box-3/esp32-s3-box-3.yaml@main
esphome:
  name: ${name}
  name_add_mac_suffix: false
  friendly_name: ${friendly_name}
api:
  encryption:
    key: s2Ih3JOYmcQwlwS5bsO7H2g3cVNoxZIIf1oGhbt1DxE=
  
wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password