A Conversational Video Interface, or CVI, is Tavus’s term for a framework that lets an AI system hold a real-time, multimodal video conversation with a person. Instead of typing into a chat box, you talk to an on-screen presence that sees you, hears you, and responds in natural speech and expression, closing the gap between using software and talking to someone.

Tavus describes CVI as three layers working together: a PAL, or persona and behavior layer, that governs how the AI acts and what it knows, a face layer that renders a real-time avatar, and a conversation and session layer that manages the live exchange over WebRTC. The full pipeline can include visual perception, turn-taking logic so the exchange flows naturally, speech-to-text, a large language model for reasoning, text-to-speech, and the avatar rendering itself. Meta has noted that Tavus uses Llama models to power parts of this experience, including visual question answering and context-aware responses tied to what the avatar sees and hears.

The practical difference from a standard chatbot is what makes CVI worth a business leader’s attention: the interface is face-to-face, spoken, visual, and built for low latency, not a back-and-forth of typed messages. That shift opens use cases where tone, presence, and pacing matter, including customer support, sales conversations, onboarding, education and training, coaching, and healthcare-style intake, each handled by AI agents that can carry a conversation rather than just answer a query.

None of that removes the need for care. A synthetic face on a video call raises questions a chat window does not: disclosure that the person is talking to AI, consent to be seen and recorded, privacy for what the system perceives, latency that can break the sense of presence, accessibility for people who cannot or do not want video, and a clear path to escalate to a human when the moment calls for one. Treat those as design requirements from the start, not afterthoughts to patch in later.

Faster resolutions and lower support costs are within reach when conversational AI is paired with the right platform for your team. Generative AI for Customer Support shows how AI can fit into support workflows, response quality, and customer experience without losing sight of the human handoff.*