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Hey,we're running a German-language voice agent (G...
# ❓・ai-evy-support
f
@AI Evy Hey, we're running a German-language voice agent (GPT Realtime mode, temperature 0.00) for a real estate company. The agent collects email addresses by asking callers to spell them out letter by letter. The problem: When a caller spells a name like G-E-H-R-I-K-E, the agent consistently auto-corrects it to "Gehricke" — changing the single "k" to "ck" because that's a more common German spelling pattern. The caller spells it correctly, the agent even reads it back correctly during the call, but when it passes the value to a function call (e.g. to send an email), it writes "ck" instead of "k". This happens specifically with k → ck, but we suspect it's a broader issue where the Realtime model applies German spelling rules to letter-by-letter input instead of treating it as a raw character sequence. What we've already tried: • LLM Temperature set to 0.00 • Explicit prompt instructions to NOT auto-correct spelled content • Letter-by-letter readback with confirmation • The agent hears and repeats the correct spelling — but still outputs the "corrected" version Since we're on GPT Realtime (speech-to-speech), we don't have access to boosted_keywords or custom STT config. Is there any known workaround for this in Realtime mode? Has anyone found a way to force the model to treat spelled-out sequences as verbatim input without applying language-model corrections? Thanks!
a
Thanks for tagging me @frafat. I'll look through relevant sources and get back to you shortly.
:** Users have reported similar challenges with email addresses and phone numbers being transcribed incorrectly, and Retell has acknowledged working on improvements for this. [(5) ]() Since this appears to be a limitation of how the realtime model processes spelled input before passing to function calls, I'd recommend reaching out to Retell support directly with specific call examples. Check out these potentially useful sources: - [Configure LLM Options]() - [Integrate Function Calling]() Would you like me to try to answer more generally based on my knowledge of LLM behavior?
### Answer This is a known challenge with GPT Realtime models, and unfortunately the sources don't document a specific workaround for preventing the model from applying language-model spelling corrections during function calls in speech-to-speech mode. What the documentation confirms: The available
s2s_model
options for speech-to-speech are
gpt-4o-realtime
,
gpt-4o-mini-realtime
,
gpt-realtime
, and
gpt-realtime-mini
. [(1) ]() [(2) ]() For function calling with realtime models, community members have reported challenges getting consistent tool calls. One workaround that has shown success is using very strict, explicit instructions in your prompt like: "after saying this... call function 'end_call' EVERY TIME" [(3) ]() Potential approaches to try: 1. **Stricter function call prompting**: In your tool description or state prompt, try explicitly instructing the model to pass the spelled value "character by character exactly as confirmed, without any spelling corrections or normalization." 2. **Consider non-realtime models**: If verbatim accuracy is critical, you might test with text-based models like
gpt-4.1
or
gpt-4.1-mini
which use separate ASR → LLM → TTS pipelines. [(1) ]() [(2) ]() This gives you more control, though at the cost of the realtime conversational flow. 3. **Structured Output**: If using OpenAI models, enabling Structured Output ensures responses strictly follow predefined schemas for function calls, which may help with parameter accuracy. [(4) ]() **Regarding ASR/email capture issues
​ To learn more, see the sources I considered: [[1] Update Retell LLM](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/update-retell-llm) [[2] Create Retell LLM](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/create-retell-llm) [[3] Your realtime gpt doesn't do tool calling](https://discord.com/channels/1186424376300679209/1408560992836915260) [[4] Configure LLM Options](https://docs.retellai.com/build/llm-options) [[5] Issues with Portuguese (PT-PT) Voice Agent: Latency, Audio Recognition, and Email Capture](https://community.retellai.com/t/issues-with-portuguese-pt-pt-voice-agent-latency-audio-recognition-and-email-capture/711) ​
Feel free to tag @AI Evy with additional questions. I also appreciate feedback, it helps me improve.