Tavus, the leading human computing company building lifelike AI humans that can see, hear, respond, and take actions, today announced AI Santa 2.0, the most advanced and emotionally intelligent version of Santa ever created. Built as an official Tavus PAL, AI Santa brings the magic of the North Pole to life with human-level presence, memory, and multimodal communication across video, voice, and text.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251209222532/en/

Tavus announces AI Santa 2.0, the world's first emotionally intelligent holiday PAL with memory, perception, and multimodal interaction. Available free at https://santa.tavus.io.

Last year, millions of people spoke with the original AI Santa through Tavus. This year, he’s back, with a few upgrades.

AI Santa represents the future of what an AI human can be: warm, expressive, personal and emotionally aware. Built to build relationships, understand your ongoing Christmas chaos, and bring holiday cheer to every interaction, AI Santa 2.0 demonstrates how Tavus transforms artificial intelligence into something that feels remarkably alive in a way never achieved before.

At Tavus, we teach machines the art of being human. Our belief is simple: technology should meet people on their terms, not the other way around. By giving AI the ability to perceive, emote, remember, and respond with real nuance, we’re building a future where the next interfaces feel personal, intuitive, and alive.

Introducing AI Santa 2.0

Now that AI Santa is a Tavus PAL, this architecture gives him:

• Memory & continuity: He remembers past conversations, traditions, and preferences.
• Visual and auditory perception: He sees user expressions, surroundings, and gestures in real time.
• Emotional intelligence: He responds with timing, tone, and warmth that feel natural and human.
• Agentic: He can take actions on your behalf, from searching the web to drafting emails, organizing documents, and helping manage your digital life.
• True multimodality: Users can speak with Santa through face-to-face video, voice calls, or text/chat.
• Proactive engagement: He can check in, offer reminders, track your Nice List status, and stay connected throughout the season.
• Evolving prompt: He rereads your previous messages before each session and becomes the Santa you need in that moment.

Santa maintains the jolly, warm personality known worldwide but now interacts with users in a deeply personalized, lifelike way made possible only through Tavus’s next-generation AI-human platform.

Accessible to Everyone

Beginning today, anyone can meet Santa through his public North Pole hotline at https://santa.tavus.io, with no account required. Users receive a free three-minute demo daily to say hello and experience the magic firsthand.

For those seeking the full, unlimited Santa experience, Santa is also available inside the Tavus PALs platform, where he has full memory, perception, and open-ended conversation abilities.

Inside a Tavus account, Santa can:

• Talk in any modality, including text, voice, or live face-to-face video, and switch between them seamlessly.
• Follow up on holiday plans, gift ideas, and anything you have discussed with him using long-term memory and continuity.
• Track your personalized Nice List progress and encourage you as the season goes on.
• Notice your reactions and respond naturally using real-time emotional and visual perception.
• Reach out proactively with reminders, North Pole updates, and cheerful surprise check-ins.

Developers can also bring AI Santa to your own corner of the internet. Embed Santa’s hyperrealistic, emotionally intelligent avatar on any website or app using Tavus APIs.

Sign up to Tavus to access the APIs, fork our open-sourced Santa repo, or drop him directly into your product with just a few lines of code.

Powered by Industry-Defining Technology

AI Santa 2.0 is built on Tavus’s multimodal suite of proprietary state-of-the-art models:

• Phoenix-4: Realistic, expressive rendering that enables Santa’s lifelike presence on video.
• Sparrow-1: Deep conversational intelligence with emotional and semantic audio understanding.
• Raven-1: Contextual perception enabling Santa to see expressions, environments, and gestures.

These models, combined with Tavus CVI, a proprietary framework for conversational video, enable the world’s first and only emotional, perceptive, and humanlike AI holiday companion.

Pricing & Availability

Public Santa Demo

Free at https://santa.tavus.io

Includes 3 minutes of daily access via video, voice, or text.

Full Santa Experience (Inside Tavus PALs)

Available through early access in the Tavus platform.

Users can join the waitlist at https://platform.tavus.io/auth/sign-up.

Bulk and enterprise experiences for brands, malls, classrooms, and creators are available upon request through the Tavus website.

Tavus Offerings

Alongside PALs, Tavus offers APIs and enterprise tools for scalable AI-human deployments.

PALs

Ready-to-use AI humans for consumers that handle conversation, assistance, and everyday tasks across video, voice, and text.

Developer APIs

For developers to build custom AI-human experiences, interactive avatars, embedded agents, and automated workflows across education, training, healthcare, sales, customer success, and more.

Enterprise Solutions

Tailored, secure deployments for recruiting, healthcare, training, and any organization that needs custom AI humans at scale.

About Tavus

Tavus is a San Francisco–based AI research company pioneering human computing, the next era of computing built around adaptive, emotionally intelligent AI humans. The company has raised $65M and is backed by CRV, Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Y Combinator. Tavus builds foundational models that teach machines to see, hear, respond, and act like people do. The company’s research team brings experience from leading universities and top AI labs, led by researchers specializing in rendering, perception, and affective computing.

In addition to PALs for consumers, Tavus offers a full suite of APIs for developers and businesses, powering personalized AI avatars, embedded video agents, automated customer experiences, and interactive characters across the web. Tavus also provides enterprise solutions for companies like Amazon, Better.com, Deloitte, EY, and thousands more, enabling teams to deploy emotionally intelligent AI humans at scale.

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

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251209222532/en/

At Tavus, we teach machines the art of being human. Our belief is simple: technology should meet people on their terms, not the other way around. We’re building a future where the next interfaces feel personal, intuitive, and alive.