Tavus Introduces Raven-1, Bringing Multimodal Perception to Real-Time Conversational AI

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 11, 2026--

Tavus, the human computing company building lifelike AI humans that can see, hear, and respond in real time, launchedRaven-1 into GA today, a multimodal perception system that enables AI to understand emotion, intent, and context the way humans do.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260211633777/en/

Raven-1 captures and interprets audio and visual signals together, enabling AI systems to understand not just what users say, but how they say it and what that combination actually means. The model is now generally available across all Tavus conversations and APIs.

Conversational AI has made rapid progress in language generation and speech synthesis, yet understanding remains a persistent gap. Most systems process speech by converting it into transcripts. The transformation strips away tone, pacing, hesitation, and expression - everything that makes the communication colorful and meaningful. Without those signals and the perception of how something is said, AI is forced to guess at intent, and those guesses break down exactly when they matter most. The sarcastic "great" becomes indistinguishable from the genuine one.

Raven-1 takes a different approach. Instead of analyzing audio and visual signals in isolation, it fuses them into a unified representation of the user's state, intent, and context, producing natural language descriptions that downstream language models can reason over directly.

A New Model for Conversational Perception

Raven-1 is a multimodal perception system built for real-time conversation in the Tavus Conversational Video Interface (CVI). Rather than outputting rigid categorical labels like "happy" or "sad," Raven-1 works just like humans think to produce interpretable natural language descriptions of emotional state and intent at sentence-level granularity.

Key capabilities include:

Raven-1 functions as a perception layer that works alongside Sparrow-1, Tavus’ recently launched conversational timing model, and Phoenix-4, creating a closed loop where perception informs response and response reshapes the moment.

Why Multimodal Perception Matters

Traditional emotion detection systems suffer from fundamental limitations. They flatten nuance into rigid categories, assume emotional consistency across entire utterances, and treat audio and visual signals independently. Human emotion is fluid, layered, and contextual. A single moment can carry frustration and hope at once.

When someone says "Yeah, I'm fine" while avoiding eye contact and speaking in a flat monotone, transcription-based systems take them at their word. Raven-1 captures the full picture: tone, expression, posture, and the incongruence between words and signals that often carries the most important meaning.

Industry research indicates that up to 75 percent of medical diagnoses are derived from patient communication and history-taking rather than lab tests or physical exams. For high-stakes use cases like healthcare, therapy, coaching, and interviews, perception-aware AI ensures this signal is not lost.

Built for Real-Time Conversations

Raven-1 was designed from the ground up for real-time operation. The audio perception pipeline produces rich descriptions in sub-100ms. Combined with the visual pipeline, the system maintains context that is never more than a few hundred milliseconds stale.

The system excels on short, ambiguous, emotionally loaded inputs, exactly the moments where traditional systems fail. A single word response like "sure" or "fine" carries radically different meanings depending on how it's delivered. Raven-1 captures that signal and makes it available to response generation.

Availability

Raven-1 is generally available today across all Tavus conversations and APIs. The model works automatically out of the box, with perception layer access exposed through Tavus APIs for custom tool calls and programmatic logic.

To see Raven-1 in action, visit the demo at https://raven.tavuslabs.org.

About Tavus

Tavus is a San Francisco-based AI research company pioneering human computing, the next era of computing built around adaptive and emotionally intelligent AI humans. Tavus develops foundational models that enable machines to see, hear, respond, and act in ways that feel natural to people.

In addition to APIs for developers and business, Tavus offers PALs, a consumer platform for AI agents that might become your friend, intern, or both.

Learn more at https://www.tavus.io.

Raven-1 is now available for Tavus APIs and PALs

Try the Raven demo and see perception in action

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration reopened the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas on Wednesday morning, just hours after it announced a 10-day closure that would have grounded all flights to and from the airport.

The FAA said in a social media post that it has lifted the temporary closure of the airspace over El Paso, saying there was no threat to commercial aviation and that all flights will resume.

The shutdown announced just hours earlier had been expected to create significant disruptions given the duration and the size of the metropolitan area.

El Paso, a border city with a population of nearly 700,000 people and larger when you include the surrounding metro area, is hub of cross-border commerce alongside the neighboring city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

The Federal Aviation Administration is closing the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas for 10 days, grounding all flights to and from the airport.

A notice posted on the FAA's website said the temporary flight restrictions were for “special security reasons,” but did not provide additional details. The closure does not include Mexican airspace.

The airport said in an Instagram post that all flights to and from the airport would be grounded from late Tuesday through late on Feb. 20, including commercial, cargo and general aviation flights. It suggested travelers contact their airlines to get up-to-date flight information.

The shutdown is likely to create significant disruptions given the duration and the size of the metropolitan area. El Paso, a border city with a population of nearly 700,000 and larger when you include the surrounding metro area, is hub of cross-border commerce alongside neighboring Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso, urged the FAA to lift the restrictions in a statement Wednesday morning. There was no advance notice given to her office, the city of El Paso or airport operations, she said.

“The highly consequential decision by FAA to shut down the El Paso Airport for 10 days is unprecedented and has resulted in significant concern within the community,” Escobar said. “From what my office and I have been able to gather overnight and early this morning there is no immediate threat to the community or surrounding areas.”

The airport describes itself as the gateway to west Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Mexico. Southwest, United, American and Delta all operate flights there, among others.

A similar temporary flight restriction for special security reasons over the same time period was imposed around Santa Teresa, New Mexico, which is about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northwest of the El Paso airport.

Southwest Airlines said in a statement that it has paused all operations to and from El Paso at the direction of the FAA.

“We have notified affected customers and will share additional information as it becomes available,” Southwest Airlines said. “Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of its customers and employees.”

FILE - A Federal Aviation Administration sign hangs in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)