Tavus has launched an innovative AI-driven Santa experience at santa.tavus.io, offering what they describe as an astonishingly lifelike chat with Santa Claus, eliminating the need to visit one at the mall. This virtual Santa, supported by notable backers like Y Combinator, Sequoia, and Peter Thiel, is free to use though it requires your email address, hinting at potential future monetization. The AI leverages Tavus’s Conversational Video Interface (CVI) technology and impressively, it even noted items in my room during our chat.

Despite being of an age where playing Santa wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, I found myself genuinely enjoying the interaction with AI Santa. This seasonal interactive platform allows users to talk directly to AI Santa, share their Christmas wishes, and spread some holiday joy.

However, my live video chat with the cheerful AI Santa didn’t go as planned. Despite achieving a perfect score on the naughty or nice scale, the emailed transcript from the Elves claimed I hadn’t made any Christmas wishes—clearly incorrect since I had asked for a new PC, being an avid follower of Tom’s Hardware. Could it be that Santa had too much sherry, or is he just too stingy to gift me a new computer? Or perhaps it’s a sign of AI technology’s limits?

Upon visiting the AI Santa webpage, you are greeted by a meticulously designed, traditional Santa clad in his iconic suit, eagerly waiting for you to press the ‘Talk to Santa’ button. He sits in a charmingly decorated Christmas setting complete with a crackling fireplace.

After clicking, you’ll be prompted to engage in a video call where you need to allow camera and microphone access so that “Santa can see and hear you.” However, it remains unclear whether this video interaction will be stored for training or other uses, as no terms and conditions or privacy policies were immediately visible on the site.

Santa starts the conversation by encouraging you to share your Christmas desires, promising to reveal if you’ve been naughty or nice. The dialogue feels surprisingly fluid, and Santa cleverly inquired how I would use my desired gift. Throughout our interaction, I made sure to remain exceedingly courteous, hopeful of securing my spot on the nice list, which seemed to work as I seemingly accumulated ‘nice points.’ If you also aim to impress, consider promising Santa mince pies and sherry for Christmas Eve. Frequent holiday greetings also appear to boost your standing on the niceness meter.

After ending the call, I was left with a cozy feeling of holiday spirit (or whatever one might call it). It had been a long time since I last spoke to Santa, but this AI version was engaging and thankfully didn’t require sitting on his lap. Despite the Elves’ email overlooking my plea for new PC hardware, it assured me that I had excelled on the nice list and hinted that my wishes might still come true—though according to AI Santa, I had asked for nothing.

Taking a Closer Look at the Conversational Video Interface (CVI)

The technology behind AI Santa includes APIs capable of understanding multimodal inputs, segmenting silent frames, performing advanced 3D rendering, analyzing sentiments, and supporting 30 different languages. Tavus explains that this festive demonstration is just a glimpse of its APIs, which are already in use across various sectors such as healthcare, education, recruitment, and customer service. They invite tech enthusiasts to explore, fork, and even customize the demo through the AI Santa website.