My AI agent doesn’t generate automatic answers after I enable generative replies

Issue symptoms

After I set up my AI agent and turn on generative replies so it can create answers from help center content, no automatic responses appear when customers ask questions.

Resolution steps

This usually happens because the AI agent can use only help center articles that are visible to customers. If an article is restricted to signed‑in users or groups, customers must sign in through messaging authentication before the AI agent can include that content in a reply.

Generative replies always follow your help center’s visibility settings, anonymous or unauthenticated users don’t receive answers based on restricted articles.

Verify that generative replies are turned on

In Admin center, go to AI  > AI agents >  [select your AI agent]

Open the Messaging behavior tab

Under If the AI agent finds relevant information, select Generate a reply

Click Publish AI agent to save your changes

Review your help center article visibility

In your help center, open a few key articles

Check Placement > View permissions

Change the visibility to Visible to everyone for the articles you want the AI agent to use

Enable messaging authentication for restricted content

If you want the AI agent to share information from restricted articles, enable messaging authentication.

This lets Zendesk confirm a user’s identity and grant access to restricted content so the AI agent can use it in generative replies.

For setup instructions, see this article: Setting up user authentication for messaging

Test the AI agent

In the AI agent editor, click Test AI agent and ask a question related to your help center content

If you test as an unauthenticated user, only unrestricted content appears

After the user signs in through messaging authentication, test again to confirm that restricted articles are now included in the AI agent’s response

Once authentication is enabled and article visibility matches your AI agent’s content sources, generative replies appear automatically when customers ask questions related to your help center topics. You don’t need to create manual answers.

For more information, see this article: Using AI to generate replies in an AI agent for messaging (Legacy)