diff --git a/config/settings.yml b/config/settings.yml
index fe620b1f..cdb28e14 100644
--- a/config/settings.yml
+++ b/config/settings.yml
@@ -177,6 +177,9 @@ discourse_ai:
     default: ""
     hidden: true
   ai_llava_api_key: ""
+  ai_strict_token_counting:
+    default: false
+    hidden: true
 
   composer_ai_helper_enabled:
     default: false
diff --git a/lib/tokenizer/basic_tokenizer.rb b/lib/tokenizer/basic_tokenizer.rb
index f4afd675..8adc4d27 100644
--- a/lib/tokenizer/basic_tokenizer.rb
+++ b/lib/tokenizer/basic_tokenizer.rb
@@ -17,14 +17,19 @@ module DiscourseAi
         end
 
         def truncate(text, max_length)
-          # Fast track the common case where the text is already short enough.
-          return text if text.size < max_length
+          # fast track common case, /2 to handle unicode chars
+          # than can take more than 1 token per char
+          return text if !SiteSetting.ai_strict_token_counting && text.size < max_length / 2
 
           tokenizer.decode(tokenizer.encode(text).ids.take(max_length))
         end
 
         def can_expand_tokens?(text, addition, max_length)
-          return true if text.size + addition.size < max_length
+          # fast track common case, /2 to handle unicode chars
+          # than can take more than 1 token per char
+          if !SiteSetting.ai_strict_token_counting && text.size + addition.size < max_length / 2
+            return true
+          end
 
           tokenizer.encode(text).ids.length + tokenizer.encode(addition).ids.length < max_length
         end
diff --git a/lib/tokenizer/open_ai_tokenizer.rb b/lib/tokenizer/open_ai_tokenizer.rb
index 0a31ffce..daf7d453 100644
--- a/lib/tokenizer/open_ai_tokenizer.rb
+++ b/lib/tokenizer/open_ai_tokenizer.rb
@@ -13,8 +13,9 @@ module DiscourseAi
         end
 
         def truncate(text, max_length)
-          # Fast track the common case where the text is already short enough.
-          return text if text.size < max_length
+          # fast track common case, /2 to handle unicode chars
+          # than can take more than 1 token per char
+          return text if !SiteSetting.ai_strict_token_counting && text.size < max_length / 2
 
           tokenizer.decode(tokenize(text).take(max_length))
         rescue Tiktoken::UnicodeError
@@ -23,7 +24,11 @@ module DiscourseAi
         end
 
         def can_expand_tokens?(text, addition, max_length)
-          return true if text.size + addition.size < max_length
+          # fast track common case, /2 to handle unicode chars
+          # than can take more than 1 token per char
+          if !SiteSetting.ai_strict_token_counting && text.size + addition.size < max_length / 2
+            return true
+          end
 
           tokenizer.encode(text).length + tokenizer.encode(addition).length < max_length
         end
diff --git a/spec/shared/tokenizer_spec.rb b/spec/shared/tokenizer_spec.rb
index 74366b0d..2c0900ed 100644
--- a/spec/shared/tokenizer_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/shared/tokenizer_spec.rb
@@ -81,6 +81,31 @@ describe DiscourseAi::Tokenizer::OpenAiTokenizer do
       sentence = "foo bar 👨🏿‍👩🏿‍👧🏿‍👧🏿 baz qux quux corge grault garply waldo fred plugh xyzzy thud"
       expect(described_class.truncate(sentence, 7)).to eq("foo bar 👨🏿")
     end
+
+    it "truncates unicode characters properly when they use more than one token per char" do
+      sentence = "我喜欢吃比萨"
+      original_size = described_class.size(sentence)
+      expect(described_class.size(described_class.truncate(sentence, original_size - 1))).to be <
+        original_size
+    end
+  end
+
+  describe "#can_expand_tokens?" do
+    it "returns true when the tokens can be expanded" do
+      expect(described_class.can_expand_tokens?("foo bar", "baz qux", 6)).to eq(true)
+    end
+
+    it "returns false when the tokens cannot be expanded" do
+      expect(described_class.can_expand_tokens?("foo bar", "baz qux", 3)).to eq(false)
+    end
+
+    it "returns false when the tokens cannot be expanded due to multibyte unicode characters" do
+      expect(described_class.can_expand_tokens?("foo bar 👨🏿", "baz qux", 6)).to eq(false)
+    end
+
+    it "handles unicode characters properly when they use more than one token per char" do
+      expect(described_class.can_expand_tokens?("我喜欢吃比萨", "萨", 10)).to eq(false)
+    end
   end
 end